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BETH LE HEP 







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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



The Star of Bethlehem 



OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS 

OF 

NEW TESTAMENT TRUTHS. 



/ 

By LYMAN ABBOTT. 



With Designs by Dore, Delaroche, Durha^i, and Parsons. 



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NEW YORK. 
iOHN KNOX McAFKK. PUBLISHKR. 

158 West 23d Street, 
1895. 






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Copyrighted, 1S95, 
BY JOHN KNOX McAFEE. 



Copyrighted by Harper & Brothers, 1869. 



PREFACE 



The Old Testament is more full of parables than the New. 
Its history is prophetic. Its stories are parables in real life. 
The chronicles of Israel are full of God's foreshadowings of the 
redemption of the world. From the Fall in Eden to the restora- 
tion of the Jews under Ezra, there are, aU along the way, finger- 
posts that point to the Cross of Christ. Their inscriptions are 
sometimes so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need 
not err therein. They are sometimes so obscured that the heed- 
less traveler notes them not. These finger-posts I seek to de- 
cipher; these parables to interpret. 

The light that shines from the Old Testament is that of the 
Star of Bethlehem, which conducts the reader to the manger of 
his Incarnate Lord. That star I seek to follow. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

THE CITIES OF THE-PLAIN Page 9 

" The wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

II. 

WATER IN THE WILDERNESS 23 

" If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, ' Give me to drink,' thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." 

III. 

ELIEZER'S PRAYER 37 

" Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the 
Son," 

IV. 

JOSEPH'S STAFF 49 

" We both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of 
all men, especially of those that believe." 

V. 

THE GREAT QUESTION 65 

" No man can serve two masters ; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else 
he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye can not serve God and mammon." 

VI. 

THE GREAT DELIVERANCE SI 

" Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." 



viii CONTENTS. 

VII. 

THE RIVEN EOCK 99 

'• But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced Ms side, and forthwith came there out blood and 
water." 

VIII. 

THE FIERY SERPENTS AND THE BRAZEN SERPENT : Ill 

" For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; that we might be made the right- 
eousness of God in him." 

IX. 

THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ Page 121 

•• Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh doT\ai from the Father of 
lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." 

X. 

THE FORLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL 131 

'■For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men, after the flesh, not many 
mighty, not many noble are called." 

XI. 

THE PRICE OF AMBITION 149 

" A man's hfe consisteth not in the abmidance of the things which he possesseth," 

XII. 

SAMSON'S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 165 

•• Denying migodliness and worldly lusts, we should Hve soberly, righteously, and godly in this 
present world ; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, 
and our Sa\"ior Jesus Christ." 

XIII. 

ELISHA'S VISION 17T 

•• We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen • for the 
things which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not seen are eternal," 

XIV. 

THE QUEEN'S CROWN 193 

" Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." 



OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS, 



I. 

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIK 

'T^HE story of tlie destruction of Sodom and Gomorrali is 
one of tlie most extraordinary in the Old Testament. 
It is singularly attested by the imperishable witness of 
the mountains and the sea. Skepticism may scout at the 
plagues of Egypt ; may smile incredulously at the marvel- 
ous deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea ; may look 
with ill-concealed pity upon those who, fed daily by Grod's 
bounty, believe that God fed the hungry Israelites in the 
wilderness ; may account the stories of the marvels which 
he wrought in answer to the prayers of Elijah the legends 
of a romantic age, and reject with ridicule the assertion of 
the apostle that the effectual fervent prayer of the right- 
eous man availeth much ; it will find nowhere in the Bible 
a story more extraordinary and intrinsically incredible 
than that of the destruction of the cities of the plain. Yet 
to deny this, it must not only impugn the sacred writers, 
but must also repudiate the traditions of heathen nations 
reported by secular historians, and refuse to listen to the 
silent testimony of nature itself For, until the vision of 



10 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

Ezekiel is fulfilled, and tlie sacred waters, flowing from 
God's holy hill, heal the waters of the Salt Sea and give 
life again to this valley of death — until mercy shall con- 
quer justice in nature as it already has in human experi- 
ence, this scene of desolation will remain, a terrible witness 
to the reality of God's justice, and the fearfulness of his 
judgments. 

Nor does it merely testify to the truth of the Scripture 
narrative. The briny waters of the Salt Sea, the upheaved 
rocks scored with fire, the mountain of solid salt, the masses 
of bitumen, the extinct crater of a neighboring volcano, the 
other innumerable traces of volcanic action, all remain, not 
only to attest that a remarkable convulsion of nature has 
taken place in the past, but also to indicate the nature of 
the phenomenon, and the character of the forces which oper- 
ated to produce it. 

In the southeast corner of Palestine, in a basin scooped 
out of the solid rock by some extraordinary pre-historic 
convulsion, lie the waters of what is fitly called the Dead 
Sea. The barren rocks which environ it crowd close to 
the water's edge. The almost impassable pathway which 
leads down their precipitous sides has no parallel even 
among the dangerous passes of the Alps and the Apen- 
nines. From the surface of this singular lake there per- 
petually arises a misty exhalation, as though it were steam 
from a vast caldron, kept at boiling point by infernal fires 
below. No fish play in these deadly waters. When now 
and then one ventures hither from the Jordan, he pays for 
his temerity with his life. No birds make here their nests. 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN. H 

No fruits flourisli along these inhospitable shores, save the 
apples of Sodom, fair to the eye, but turning to dust and 
ashes in the hand of him that plucks them. The few mis- 
erable men that still make their home in this accursed 
valley are dwarfed, and stunted, and sickly, as those that 
live in the shadowy border land that separates life from 
death. 

Yet this sterile scene possesses a ghastly, corpse-like 
beauty, even in death, which indicates what its living beau- 
ty must have been. Here and there, along its shores, are 
a few oases, whose fertile soil, abundant vegetation, and 
luxuriant growth, point us back to the morning when 
Abraham and Lot stood on the neighboring hill-top, and 
" beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered 
every where, even as the garden of the Lord." For once 
the southern extremity of the Dead Sea was doubtless a 
fertile plain. Magnificent mountains encircled it in their 
arms. The streams that irrigated its surface outnumbered 
all that were to be found in all the rest of Palestine. A 
tropical sun drew from a fertile soil a most luxuriant veg- 
etation. The waters of the neighboring lake, then fresh 
and sweet, were dotted with many a sail, and alive with 
innumerable fish. A mountain of salt at the southern ex- 
tremity of the plain supplied the Holy Land with an arti- 
cle even more essential to the Hebrews than to us. Vast 
veins of bitumen, interwoven in the texture of the soil, sup- 
plied them with fuel, with brick, and with a substitute for 
pitch and tar, and brought to the vale of Siddim a profit- 
able commerce. Kings fought for the possession of this 



22 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

second Eden. Flonrisliing cities, embowered in all the 
bloom and verdure of tropical gardens, sprang up in this 
" Valley of Fields." The fabled glories of Damascus were 
surpassed by the realities of this terrestrial paradise. The 
busy hum of industry resounded where now reigns the un- 
broken stillness of the grave. The fragrance of many gar- 
dens loaded the air now heavy with the exhalations of this 
salty sea. Where now is utter loneliness and hopeless des- 
olation was once a lake country, teeming with life, and ex- 
quisite in all the horticultural beauty of an Asiatic garden 
— the fairest nook in all the fair land of Canaan. 

Yet even then death lurked unseen in the midst of this 
prolific life. Volcanic fires slumbered beneath the carpet- 
ed fields. The veins of bitumen only awaited the torch of 
the Lord to enkindle farm and city in one universal con- 
flagration. The mound of salt was made ready to mingle 
its properties with the water of the neighboring lake, and 
turn it from a fount of life to a sea of death. The lake it- 
self only waited the beck of God to overleap its bound- 
aries, and obliterate, with one fierce and irresistible wave, 
every trace of the civilization of the proud and prosperous 
cities of the plain. The very luxuriance of their land bred 
in its inhabitants those vices which belong to a luxurious 
and enervated people. The record of their shameless in- 
iquity, hinted at in a few brief words in the sacred story, 
is too infamous to be dilated on. Lewdness ran such riot 
that strangers were not safe from the perpetration of crimes 
which modern literature dares not even so much as name. 
In all the plain not half a score of men could be found 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN. 13 

whose purity might justify the mercy of God in restrain- 
ing the fulfillment of his purposes of justice. In the city 
of Sodom there was but one who, in the general degener- 
acy of the age, feared God or regarded his law. Often, per- 
haps, had Lot remonstrated with his fellows — but in vain ; 
often had he sighed for the peace and purity of his pas- 
toral life, yet lacked the courage to return to it in his old 
age. His fellow-citizens repaid his remonstrances with 
mob violence. His own son-in-law ridiculed his warnings 
of divine judgment. 

At length the doomed cities filled to the full the meas- 
ure of their iniquity. The patience of God would wait no 
longer. Lot, warned of the impending destruction, went 
forth by night, at the hazard of his life, to save, if possible, 
at least his own kinsfolk from a fearful death. But he 
seemed to them as one that mocked. They laughed him 
to scorn. 

It is easy to imagine the replies of the incredulous peo- 
ple. Their descendants employ the same replies to-day. 
" Sodom and Gomorrah to be destroyed by fire !" cried one ; 
" it is contrary to all our experience. No evidence can con- 
vince me of it." " It would be a violation of the laws of 
nature," said another. " God is too merciful," said a third. 
" It will be time enough to flee when the fire comes," said 
a fourth. " I will think of it," said a fifth ; " but the sub- 
ject is one of momentous importance. I can do nothing in 
haste." 

There was no time for delay. The message was deliver- 
ed. The blood of this peoj^jle was henceforth upon their 



14 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

own heads. Lot, leaving behind liim his country, home, 
possessions, friends, kinsfolk — poorer far than when he en- 
tered the valley where his wealth had been accumulated — 
his wife and two daughters his sole companions, w^ent forth 
to commence his life anew, a stranger in a strange land. 
The rising sun was just beginning to touch the mountain 
tops with light as they issued from the western gate of the 
still sleeping city, and commenced to traverse the plain to- 
ward the little city of Zoar, the ruins of which are still to 
be seen among the mountains that skirt the southern edge 
of the Dead Sea. 

The morning sun rose clear and bright. The city woke 
from its slumbers, and went to its accustomed tasks. Yet 
on that highest southern peak there hung a heavy cloud. 
It was there at early sunrise. The air was hot and murky. 
A strange oppressiveness was in it. The crowing cock 
hailed the rising sun less joyously than usual. The 
cattle in the field showed signs of uneasiness and fear. 
Blacker grows the cloud; thicker and heavier the air. 
Lightnings play about the mountain summit. Ever and 
anon a heavy peal of thunder seems to shake the very hills, 
rolling and reverberating among the surrounding peaks, 
till finally it is lost far up the lake. The birds hush their 
songs. Passers in the street hurry to reach a place of shel- 
ter. Children are called in from their out-door sports. The 
streets of busy, money-making Sodom are deserted and 
hushed. All hearts dread they know not what. 

Now the sun withdraws behind the darkened clouds, 
and hides its face from the impending calamity. Then 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN, 15 

suddenly a new and strange light illumines the darkened 
scene. From a neighboring peak there issues a column of 
smoke, and stones, and salty ashes, and lurid flame. The 
thunders are no longer lost in the far distance. The whole 
air is tremulous with their reverberating echoes. The light- 
ning no longer comes and goes in flashes. The whole south- 
ern horizon is sheeted with flame. It seems no longer even 
to abide in the heavens. For lo ! blue flames run to and 
fro across the fields, in strange intermixture, as though they 
were uplifted torches borne by devils joining in some fiend- 
ish dance below. Now these lurid lights leap up in sheets 
of flame toward the darkened heavens; now they burrow 
in the ground, throwing up showers of soil and stone, and 
making huge chasms in the solid earth. The husband- 
men run affrighted from the fields to find a shelter in the 
city. Their wives and children flee from the falling cities 
for shelter to the fields. The solid earth trembles and 
reels. Houses and temples, sought for shelter, prove only 
tombs. From the chasms of the earth the flames, upleap- 
ing, devour whatever the earthquake leaves. The air \^ 
filled with a shower of falling ashes. It is all alive with 
flame. Filled with dismay, mothers call wildly for their 
children; children call piteously for their mothers; and 
wives and husbands seek each other, but in vain. 
• But hark ! what sound was that ? Neither the thunder 
of the heavens, nor the artillery of the mountains, nor the 
groanings of the convulsed earth. The sea ! the sea ! 

For now the waters of the lake, uplifted from their bed, 
roll in upon the plain. Water and fire contend in terrible 



IQ OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

battle for the mastery. Over tlie blackened fields and 
ruined cities God spreads this veil of waters, that the earth 
may not see the destruction he hath wrought ; while the 
thunders of heaven and earth, the hissing of the red-hot 
rocks as the waters overflow them, the crash of falling build- 
ings, the screams of the affrighted, and the groans of the 
dying, mingle in a chorus more terrible, accompanying a 
scene more awful, than any the world hath ever witnessed, 
or shall ever witness, until that day when the whole heav- 
ens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the whole earth 
shall melt with fervent heat. 

''And Abraham gat tip early in the morning^ % ^ ^ g^^^j^- 
he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah^ and toward all the 
land of the plain^ and heheld, and lo, the smoke of the coun- 
try went up as the smoke of afurnace^ 

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gos- 
pel. Every act in the great, the awful drama of life is here 
foreshadowed. The analogy is so perfect that we might 
almost be tempted to believe that this story is a prophetic 
allegory, did not nature itself vdtness its historic truthful- 
ness. 

The fertile plain contained, imbedded in its own soil, the 
elements of its own destruction. There is reason to believe 
the same is true of this world on which we live. A feW 
years ago an unusually brilliant star was observed in a 
certain quarter of the heavens. At first it was thought to 
be a newly-discovered sun. More careful examination re- 
sulted in a different hypothesis. Its evanescent character 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN. \^ 

indicated combustion. Its brilliancy was marked for a 
few hours — a few nights at most. Then it faded, and 
was gone. Astronomers believe that it was a burning 
world. Our own earth is a globe of living fire. Only a 
thin crust intervenes between us and this fearful interior. 
Ever and anon, in the rumbling earthquake or the sublime 
volcano, it gives us warning of its presence. These are 
themselves Gospel messengers. They say, if we would 
but hear them. Prepare to meet thy God. The intima- 
tions of science confirm those of revelation. " The heav- 
ens and the earth ^ ^ ^ are kept in store, reserved unto 
fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly 
men." 

What was true of Sodom and Gomorrah, what is true 
of the earth we live on, is true of the human soul. It con- 
tains within itself the instruments of its own punishment. 
There is a fearful significance in the solemn words of the 
apostle, " After thy hardness and impenitent heart treas- 
urest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath." 
Men gather, with their own hands, the fuel to feed the 
flame that is not quenched. They nurture in their own 
bosoms the worm that dieth not. In habits formed, never 
to be broken ; in words spoken, incapable of recall ; in 
deeds committed, never to be forgotten ; in a life wasted 
and cast away, that can never be made to bloom again, man 
prepares for himself his own deserved and inevitable chas- 
tisement. Son, remember! — to the soul who has spent 
its all in riotous living there can be no more awful con- 
demnation. 

B 



18 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

Alas ! to how many the divine word of warning is as an 
idle tale which they regard not. Lot still seems as one 
that mocks. The. danger is imminent, but not apparent. 
Men slumber on the brink of death. Woe unto them that 
dare prophesy evil. It has always been so, and it will al- 
ways be so till time shall be no more. Noah, warning of 
the flood ; Lot, of the destroying fire ; Jeremiah, of the ap- 
proaching captivity ; Christ, of the irreparable destruction 
of the cities by the Sea of Gralilee and of Jerusalem, city 
of God, are all received wdth impatient scorn. America 
laughs at the prophecies of her wisest men, and the bap- 
tism of fire and blood takes her at last altogether by sur- 
prise. Oh you who hear with careless incredulity the cry, 
Flee as a bird to your mountain, take a lesson from the 
inculcations of the past. "Who hath ears to hear let him 
hear." 

He that heeds the Gospel message must be ready to do 
as Lot did. He had neither time nor opportunity to save 
any thing but himself from the universal wreck. Houses, 
lands, property, position, honors, friends — all must be left 
behind. Every interest bound him fast to Sodom — every 
interest but one. All were offset by that fearful cry, " Es- 
cape for thy life." What ransom is too great to give for 
that? The conditions of the Gospel are not changed. The 
voice of Christ still is, " Whosoever he be of you that for- 
saketh not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple." It 
is no easier in the nineteenth century than in the first to 
serve both God and Mammon. The judgment which God 
visited upon Ananias and Sapphira is perpetually repeated. 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN. 19 

The Church is full of dead Christians, struck down with 
spiritual death, because they have kept back part of the 
price — because they have not given all. to Him who gave 
up all that he might ransom them from sin and death. 

" Eemember Lot's wife." How many a Galatian Chris- 
tian has begun to run well, but has suffered hinderances to 
prevent the consummation of the race. How many a Pli- 
able flounders a wMle in the slough of despond, then goes 
back to the city of Destruction. How many a gladiator 
enters the lists, but shirks the battle. How many a labor- 
er puts his hand to the plow, and then turns back. How 
many a soul, startled by the cry, Escape for thy life, com- 
mences to flee, then stops, wavers, hesitates, and suffers the 
incrustations of worldliness to gather over him, and turn 
him from a living witness of the power of God's grace into 
a fearful monument of the danger of a worldly spirit and 
a divided service. If to the impenitent the story of Sodom 
and Gomorrah is full of warning, to the hesitating, laggard 
Christian the story of Lot's wife is one of no less solemn 
significance. 

^ Reader, if you are out of Christ you are living in the 
city of Destruction. There is but a hand's-breadth be- 
tween you and death. But there is deliverance. The 
mountain of refuge is not far off. A voice, sweeter than 
that of angels, and far mightier to save, cries out to you, 
Escape for thy life ; look not behind thee ; escape to the 
mountain, lest thou be consumed. It is the voice of the 
Son of God. The irreparable past he effaces with his blood. 
The w^asted life he makes to bloom again. " This is a faith- 



20 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

ful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus 
came into the world to save sinners" — not to teach, not 
to govern, but to save. For he comes not as a pilot to give 
safe voyage to vessels yet whole and strong ; but to those 
already lying on the rocks and beaten in the angry surf, 
threatened every moment with engulfment, he comes, to 
succor, to rescue, to save. There is death in delay. There 
is safety only in the Savior's arms. " Haste thee ; escajDe 
thither." 

" Haste, traveler, haste ! the night comes on, 
And many a shining hour is gone ; 
The storm is gathering in the west, 
And thou art far from home and rest : 
Haste, traveler, haste ! 

' ' The rising tempest sweeps the sky ; 
The rains descend, the Avinds are high ; 
The waters swell, and death and fear 
Beset thy path ; no refuge near : 
Haste, traveler, haste ! 

" Haste, while a shelter you may gain — 
A covert from the wind and rain — 
A hiding-place, a rest, a home — 
A refuge from the wrath to come ; 
Haste, traveler, haste ! 

" Then linger not in all the plain ; 
Flee for thy life, the mountain gain ; 
Look not behind ; make no delay ; 
Oh, speed thee, speed thee on thy way ! 
Haste, traveler, haste!" 




THE WANDERERS. 



WATBM m THE WILDERNESS. 23 



11. 

WATER IN THE WILDEENESS. 

A FEIGHTFUL desert. Low rounded hills of stone, 
strangely colored but treeless, losing themselves in 
the dim horizon of a barren and illimitable waste of sand. 
Waterless wadies, marking, with their deep gorges in the 
soft sandstone, places where the mountain torrents flowed 
a few weeks ago. A burning sun. A strange shimmer- 
ing heat that seems to exhale from the scorched earth. No 
shade. No trees. Here and there the stunted retem, the 
only vegetation to be seen. Not even the cool shadow of 
a great rock. A dazzling brightness that shines not only 
from the oppressive sun, but is reflected from the polished 
rock and the yellow sands of the desert — a light and heat 
that parches the skin, fevers the brow, makes the eyes smart 
with intolerable burning. Far as the eye can reach this 
same scene repeated; no tent; no tree; no attainable shel- 
ter ; no pathway ; a trackless desert ; no sign, far or near, 
of human life. 

Into this desert two helpless beings, mother and son, 
have come to die. 

A life of strange vicissitudes has been that of Hagar. 
She is an Egyptian by birth. She has the dark tresses, 
the coal-black eyes, the olive skin, the hot blood, the haugh- 



24 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

ty pride, the impetuous passions of Jier people. She be= 
longs to a dominant race, yet is a slave. Servitude goes 
hard with such. It has gone hard with Hagar, though her 
master has been more than kind to her. 

He has been, in fact, her husband. To be childless is, 
in the Orient, to be accursed of God. On Abraham this 
curse rested. His wealth increased. His flocks, his herds, 
his slaves were multiplied. Kings were honored by his 
alliance. But his tent was solitary. . The poorest menial 
in his camp was richer than he. No sparkling eyes laughed 
with new delight when they met his. No chubby arms 
reached out for him to take their owner. No childish lips 
cried Father to him. Even the wail of a babe would 
have been a solace. Oh, the lonely, solitary, darkened 
house that has not the light and the music of children in 
it, a garden with no flowers, a grove with no bii^d, heaven 
with no harp, no hymn. Sarah — true woman in this at 
least — felt the void even more keenly than her husband. 
The age was j)olygamous. The wife offered to her lord 
her favorite maid. Hagar was promoted from slave to sec- 
ond wife, no great promotion in the Orient ; but it was 
too great for Hagar. She despised the wife whom she 
fancied she had supplanted. When maternal instincts 
whispered to her God's promise of a child, denied so long 
to Sarah, she made no attempt to conceal her exultant 
scorn. It was more than the proud and sensitive heart of 
Sarah could endure. The true wife reasserted herself 
Hagar was deposed. She became again the maid of the 
mistress ; suffered a little while in proud silence the petty 



WATEB IN THE WILDERNESS. 25 

revenge of her intolerant foe ; then fled to this same wilder- 
ness. Perhaps she hoped to find her way back to Egypt ; 
perhaps she only hoped to die. 

Neither relief was granted her. She must battle bravely 
on. The mother in her soul recalled her to her duty. A 
voice, as the voice of an angel, met her in the desert, and 
bade her retrace her steps. " Eeturn," it said to her, " to 
thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. Be- 
hold thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt 
call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy 
afiliction." It was a hard battle between the woman's pride 
and the mother's instinct. But the mother conquered the 
woman. Hagar went back to submit her proud neck again 
to the yoke of an intolerable bondage. 

That well-side, where she fought out the battle of her life 
which made her the mother of a mighty nation, she never 
forgot. " Beer-lahai-roi," she called it — " the well of him 
that liveth and seeth me." Who ever forgets the place 
and the hour wherein he first meets God and submits his 
own proud will to the will of the Almighty ? 

Hagar never retook her lost position. She was always 
the maid of Sarah, never again the wife of Abraham. So 
fourteen years passed away. They were years of bitter- 
ness ; bitterness to Sarah, because God had given to Hagar 
what he denied to her, a child ; bitterness to Abraham, 
who loved his son, and Hagar for his son's sake, yet could 
guard them from the petty revenges of his jealous wife 
only by repressing his affection; bitterness to Hagar, 
who bore with the patience of pride the anomaly of her 



25 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

position, motlier of Abraham's lieir, slave of Abraham's 
wife. 

For that Ishmael was Abraham's heir she never doubted. 
As the years rolled on this assurance became the convic- 
tion of the patriarch's household. Abraham no longer 
hoped for another son. Sarah laughed at the bare sugges- 
tion. In Ishmael the promises all centered. Upon Ishmael 
the almost regal splendor of the old patriarch's wealth 
would all devolve. He would become the father of a great 
nation. The mother might die a slave; what matter, so 
that the son lived a prince. All this was instilled into 
Ishmael's soul. He shared the haughty spirit of his mother. 
He caught her infectious hate. 

When, therefore, at length, Isaac, the Child of Laugh- 
ter, was born in Sarah's old age, it was a bitter blow 
to Ishmael, the Child of Affliction. Sarah, the Princess, 
received the wife's true coronation. Hagar, the Stranger, 
became a stranger, indeed, in Abraham's household. Such 
a disappointment sometimes humiliates, but oftener embit- 
ters pride. Ishmael looked on Isaac as one that had come 
to rob him of his heritage. Yet Isaac's right to that inher- 
itance he denied. Ishmael was the elder. He still claimed, 
in the silence of his own proud heart, the elder son's por- 
tion. But even this last hope he was not permitted long 
to nourish. When the time of weaning came, Abraham 
publicly recognized the young babe as his heir, with all 
the pomp and ceremony which always in the Orient ac- 
companies this event. The mother and son witnessed with 
hot, proud hearts the festivities in which they could not 



WATEB IN THE WILDE BNE88. 27 

join. Hagar, educated in tlie slave's school, had learned 
to hide her scorn beneath a passionless exterior. The son 
made no effort to hide his. Had Sarah possessed any mag- 
nanimity of soul, she might well have afforded to grace her 
triumph with a generous forbearance. She saw fit to dis- 
honor it by humiliating her rival. She demanded that Ab- 
raham cast out the child he still loved so tenderly, and the 
mother who had borne him. Hagar was too proud to re- 
monstrate. She accepted the leathern bottle and the scanty 
stock of provisions which Abraham gave her. Wrestling 
with the agony of a disappointed ambition, a crucified 
pride, a broken heart, she entered a second time the wil- 
derness of Beersheba. 

Before, the hope of her maternity sustained her. Now, 
she brought her boy to die with her. 

The nearest haven was Egypt. A trackless desert in- 
tervened. She had neither path nor guide. She soon 
missed her way. Dazed, bewildered, she wandered on, she 
knew not why nor whither, only fleeing from the horror 
of the past, only hoping for some rocky shelter, by whose 
protecting side she and her child might be entombed to- 
gether by the drifting sands. The water in the bottle was 
soon exhausted. The boy, faint and footsore, could no 
longer follow, with laggard steps, his mother. His parched 
lips, his swollen eyes, his throbbing head, his bursting 
veins, his frame consumed with fever, all told that death 
was nigh. She half dragged, half carried him to the shade 
of a stunted bush, and laid him there. The sharp agony 
of his death-struggle she could not witness. She with- 



28 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

drew " as it were a bow-shot" — for she said, " Let me not 
see the death of the child." Then her pride gave way. 
She burst into a fit of passionate weeping, that turned into 
a piteous, despairing moan for help, with no help near. 

No help near ! Ah ! God is always near. But God 
Hagar had forgotten. Perhaps, in the impiety of her de- 
spair, she disowned the God of Abraham and of Sarah. 

Oh, mother ! blind with tears and anguish, though thou 
hast forgotten God, God has not forgotten thee. Thy son 
is dying of thirst, and thou of a broken heart, while close 
beside thee, almost at thy feet, God has stored treasures of 
water for thy supply. Does no vision of Beer-lahai-roi 
rise out of the dim past to cheer thee ? Does no echo of 
the angel voice repeat the message that need never fail in 
the hour of even intense despair, " Thou God seest me ?" 

Blessed be God for the faith of childhood. Blessed be 
his name for the fruits of a father's example, seemingly lost, 
but garnered in unexpected seasons. The despairing moth- 
er gives way to passionate grief To the God of his father 
Ishmael turns his dimmed eyes, and whispers, with parched 
lips, his broken cry for help. 

''•And GodTieard the voice of tlie lad; and the angel of 
God called to Hagar out of heaven^ and said unto her., 
' What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard 
the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift iip the lad, and 
hold him in thine hand; for Iioill mahe him a great na- 
tion^ And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of wa- 
ter ; and she went and filled the hottle with water, and gave 
the lad to drinlcP 



WATER IN THE WILDERNESS. 29 

Eomance depicts no scene more touching than this pic- 
ture from real life — a mother laying down her only child 
to die close beside the spring of life-giving waters, which 
her eyes, blinded by tears, fail to see. Yet how often is 
this scene repeated. How often we, too, in the wilderness, 
despairing, lay our hopes, our ambitions, our loves, down 
to die, just in the place, just at the time which God has or- 
dained for our succor. How often our eyes, like Hagar's, 
are holden that we can not see. How often our despair is 
the prelude to our deliverance. We are never forsaken. 
God never forgets. In the most frightful desert ex- 
periences, the spring Beer-lahai-roi, Thou God seest me, 
is always to be found. For this sublime truth that God 
ever loveth me — not the world only, but poor me in my 
individual poverty, and suffering, and want — is not only a 
restraint upon us in the moment of temptation, and an in- 
centive in hours of spiritual sluggishness, it is the Chris- 
tian's unfailing source. of comfort. In hours of utter lone- 
liness, in hours when heart-sick we cry out, No man cares 
for my soul, there comes a voice from the heaven above, 
as the voice of an angel, which says, " I will never leave 
thee nor forsake thee." 

I have read somewhere a fairy tale of a certain Prince 
who was attended by two angels^ a good one and a mali- 
cious one. This prince was bent upon pursuing a certain 
journey, the issue of which would be his destruction. At 
every step of his way he found his path miraculously im- 
peded, and as miraculously opened for him. A lofty and 
precipitous mountain was planted in his way. A tunnel. 



30 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

cut without hands, suddenly appeared, and gave him free 
passage through. A yawning chasm was cleft in the earth. 
A roaring torrent, beating against the rocks below, forbade 
all attempts at passage. Even while he gazed upon it, a 
bridge suddenly leaped out of nothing, and spanned the 
abyss. So it is in life. Only it is our good genie that 
opens the way where hinderances seem to forbid all hope 
of farther progress, that tunnels the mountain and bridges 
the chasm which bars our journey. That good genie is our 
God. "When thou passest through the waters," saith He, 
" I will be with thee ; and through the rivers they shall 
not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire 
thou shalt not be burned : neither shall the flame kindle 
upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the holy One of 
Israel, thy Savior." 

Nay, more. Hagar was driven from her home to find 
her God. She seemed to be going away from all good in- 
fluences. She seemed to have turned her back upon the 
God of Abraham. She was journeying to Egypt, the land 
of heathen worship. But it was in the desert, not in Ca- 
naan, that the God of Abraham was revealed to her ; as it 
was in the hour of her despair and her exhaustion that her 
eyes were opened, and she saw the w^ell near whose side 
she had lain down to die. It is often so with us. God in- 
habits no temple. He delights to surprise us with unex- 
pected revelations of himself. He is found sometimes 
where Zacharias found him, in the Holy of Holies, before 
the altar. But quite as often he is found in desert places. 
And where God is, there is holy ground. Hagar had 



WATBM IJSr THE WILDERNESS. 31 

heard of liim in Abraham's tent. But she found him for 
herself only at the well Beer-lahai-roi, and in the desert of 
Beersheba. Moses had learned of him in his mother's 
home. But he did not see Jehovah until, an exile from 
Egypt, he wandered lonely and an outcast in the desolate 
wilderness of Midian, Elijah had often communed with 
the God he served. But he first heard the still small voice 
of his King when, seemingly d^eserted of God, he fled for 
his life to that same desert, and, in utter desolation of spir- 
it, prayed that he might die. Out of utter loneliness come 
generally new experiences of divine companionship. The 
angels strengthen us only after our agony in Gethsemane. 
Jacob receives his blessing only after a night of wrestling. 
The Israelites, redeemed from bondage, came, so soon as 
they had crossed the Red Sea, to the bitter waters of 
Marah. The Christian's first experiences are often those 
of trial. We cry out against the bitter cup. We can not 
drink of it. Into the waters of Marah Moses cast the tree 
the Lord showed him, and the waters were made sweet. 
The cross heals all woes. The sweetest waters the Chris- 
tian ever drinks are the waters of Marah when God has 
sweetened them. Our best and brightest visions are in 
our night hours. In life, as in nature, the bright bow of 
God's promise is painted only on tears. 

Be not disheartened, then, oh weeping Hagar, nor let thy 
weeping blind thee to God's presence and God's love. 
Thou art never alone. The way through the wilderness 
is the way to Beer-lahai-roi. The hour of thy despair is 
the hour of God's sweetest revelations. Thy very tears 



32 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

purify the atmospliere of thy soul, and give thee a clearer 
vision. God comes into the heart most readily when de- 
spair has driven out all earthly hopes and ambitions. He 
dismantles that he may occupy. There is peculiar mean- 
ing, which experience of sorrow alone can fully compre- 
hend, in the sentence, "When my father aiid my mother 
forsake me, then will the Lord take me up." God is near- 
est the forsaken. 

But what if Hagar had shut her ears to the voice of the 
angel, and her eyes to the divine revelation of life-giving 
water. To have died — died with succor close at hand — 
is any thing more sad ? I remember to have read stories 
of mariners who have crossed the deep in safety only to 
be wrecked within sight of their cottage lights, and to have 
their bodies beaten upon the jagged rocks by the cruel 
waves before their very door. I remember to have read 
stories of travelers lost in Alpine snows, and lying down 
to die within a few rods of the sheltering roof and warm 
fires of St. Bernard monastery. How often is this experi- 
ence repeated. How many, many needless deaths there are. 
To how many a Hagar dying in the wilderness the voice 
of God's angel cries out in vain, " Turn ye, turn ye, for 
why will ye die." 

The world is at best a frightful desert. It is full of 
bright flowers, and delightful shade, and luscious fruit at 
first. But gradually these fade and disappear. The jour- 
ney grows more barren at every step. Our stock of pro- 
visions is scanty at the best, and soon exhausted. All the 
water we can carry in the bottle is but little, and is quick- 



WATBB IN THE WILDEBNE88. 33 

\j gone. Our pleasures, our ambitions, our hopes, even 
our earthly affections, can not supply us forever. When 
this stock is gone, what then ? Alas ! how many a pilgrim 
lies down to die ignorant of him who is the living water. 
The voice of God calls to him, but he hears it not. His 
eyes are blinded that he can not, will not see. He dies — 
dies of thirst, while the spring of living waters, close be- 
side him, seems to murmur, " Ye will not come to me, that 
ye might have life." God grant to you, reader, if you are 
content with your scanty stock, speedy desolation, that may 
drive you to him who alone gives true life ; if you are 
already desolate and well-nigh in despair, a revelation of 
him who is in this desert land of ours " a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life." 

C 





REBEKAH AT THE WELL. 



ELIEZEW8 PBA TEIi. 3 7 



III. 

ELIEZEE'S PKAYER 

I^EAELY forty years had elapsed since Hagar and Ish- 
mael fled into tlie wilderness of Beersheba. To Abra- 
ham both were as dead. The promise of God, " The land 
which thou seest to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for- 
ever," was still unfulfilled. For nearly a hundred years 
Abraham had patiently awaited its fulfillment, and still he 
was a pilgrim and a stranger. Still "by faith he sojourned 
in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in 
tabernacles." From north to south, from east to west of 
all this goodly land, he owned naught but the grave of 
Machpelah. There his wife lay buried. There ere long 
he was to lie down beside her. And yet his faith waxed 
not faint. He still firmly believed that his seed should 
inherit the land in which he owned nothing but a grave. 
This glorious expectancy he would leave to Isaac. He had 
little else to leave. 

The bond that united Sarah and the child of her old 
age was no ordinary one. Three years had passed since 
her death, and Isaac still was not comforted. Tender rath- 
er than strong-hearted, submissive rather than self reliant, 
he still mourned as on the day when he stood with his fa- 
ther beside her rock-hewn grave. The light of his life had 



38 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

gone out. He was no longer a Child of Laughter. His 
hopes, ambitions, young affections lay in that grave where 
Sarah slept. He had no heart to think of marriage, even 
had Oriental etiquette permitted him to seek for himself a 
bride. But it did not. In the East no flowery path of 
pleasant courtship leads to the altar whereon love sacri- 
fices. The marriage is a contract between families. Often 
the bride and groom do not even see each other till the 
wedding feast. This perhaps partly explains an ancient 
Jewish usage which fixed on Wednesday as the wedding- 
day. For, reasoned the Rabbis, the Sanhedrim meets on 
Thursday, and thus affords the husband an opportunity of 
presenting to the court without delay any complaint he 
may have to bring against his bride. 

Abraham was the first to arouse himself from this stupor 
of grief. Oriental clans are separated by the same feeling 
of animosity which prevails among Indian tribes. They 
seldom intermarry. Abraham would fain seek for Isaac 
a wife from his own country and his own kindred. Re- 
ligious considerations intensified this desire. Idolatry was 
universal. But in his father's household there was at least 
some knowledge of the true God. Ishmael had married a 
wife from the land of Egypt. Isaac should not be perinit- 
ted thus to forget the God of his father. It is said that 
some one, surprised at the serenity of William of Orange 
in the disastrous days of the Netherlands, asked him, 
" Have you some secret alliance ?" " Yes," was the reply, 
"with the King of kings; no other." This was the only 
alliance for which Abraham cared. Whatever else his 



ELIEZEB'S PRATER. 39 

son's wife inherited was matter of indifference to him so 
that she inherited faith in the God he followed. 

Abraham had neither the energy nor the strength to 
undertake himself the task of selecting a wife for his only 
son. The journey to Mesopotamia was long, difficult, per- 
haps not wholly free from danger. He would not send 
Isaac. Desolate, lonely, the bereaved father could not suf- 
fer his only son to leave his side. But in his encampment 
was an old and trusty servant. For many years Eliezer 
had been the steward of Abraham's household. He was 
more like an elder son than like a servant. In earlier days 
the patriarch had purposed to adopt him, and make him 
his heir. Between such a life-long servant and the chil- 
dren of the household there grew up a peculiar and tender 
feeling, such as in our more mercenary age we can not eas- 
ily understand. The feeling of the old slave-nurse for the 
white children she has tended helps to interpret it. This 
Eliezer Abraham summoned to his side. He commissioned 
him to go back to Mesopotamia, there to find from the pa- 
triarch's kindred a wife for the patriarch's son. He admin- 
istered to him a solemn oath : " I will make thee swear by 
the Lord, the Grod of heaven, and the God of the earth, that 
thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters 
of the Canaanites among whom I dwell ; but thou shalt 
go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife 
unto my son Isaac." 

Eliezer hesitated. He foresaw difficulties. "What if the 
woman he selected would not come, a very probable and 
very perplexing contingency. Should he then come back 



40 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

for Isaac? No. On no account should Isaac leave the 
land which Jehovah had promised to him. If the chosen 
bride would not come, then Eliezer's duty was done. But 
she would come. " The Lord God of heaven," said Abra- 
ham, " shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take 
a wife unto my son from thence." The old man's faith 
was inspiring. Eliezer made the solemn promise. With 
his long caravan, laden with bridal presents, he started 
ujDon his singular journey, to select, in an unknown land 
and from the midst of strangers, a wife for his master's 
only son. A peculiar embassage — a perplexing one, too, 
we should say. 

As he drew toward his journey's end, and the walls of 
the city of Nahor appeared in the distance through the 
golden twilight of the setting sun, his perplexity increased. 
He was not versed in that skepticism, borrowed of Aris- 
totle, which denies that God attends to human wants. He 
knew nothing of that feeling which induced the Cretans 
to erect a statue of Jove without ears, because they thought 
it derogatory to the deity to suppose that he could hear 
the cry of humanity. In a few simple words he asked the 
God of Abraham to guide him. At the same time he pro- 
posed to himself a simple expedient, by which he would 
govern himself in the selection of Isaac's bride. As the 
breeze of evening abates something of the intolerable heat 
of the dry, hot climate of the East, the women gather at 
the public wells, which generally are dug just outside the 
city walls, and draw the water for their respective homes. 
Eliezer resolved, as the maidens came to the well, where 



ELIEZER'8 PBA YEB. 4 1 

he was resting, to ask of them a drink of water. This any 
one would readily give him. But if any one should do 
more, and offer to draw for his camels also, he would con- 
clude she would make a good wife. The camel is a great 
drinker„ To draw for ten is no easy task. The woman 
who would undertake it must needs have good health and 
strength, as well as boundless good-nature. 

He had hardly finished his prayer when a young woman 
drew near the well with her pitcher in hand. Her beauty 
impressed the old servant the moment he looked upon her. 
We can imagine with what a beating heart he preferred 
his simple request for the drink of water. She complied 
at once. As soon as he had finished drinking, she pro- 
posed to water his camels. Without waiting for an an- 
swer, she poured the contents of her pitcher into the stone 
trough, which is the almost universal accompaniment of an 
Eastern well, and ran down the steps for another pitcher- 
ful. She did not cease drawing till the camels were all 
supplied. The quickness of God's answer amazed the sim- 
ple-hearted servant. He seems to have proposed the test 
to himself with no real expectation it would succeed. 
What now to make of it that it had succeeded so well and 
so speedily he did not know. However, his quick intuition 
of woman's nature did not desert him. He said nothing 
of his errand. When Kebekah's task was ended, he beg- 
ged her to accept from him what the woman of the Orient 
accounts the most valuable of all gifts — and perhaps the 
woman of the Orient is not so unlike her sisters, after all 
— some very rich and costly jewelry. At the same time he 



42 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

asked her name, and wiLether lie could lodge at her father's 
house that night. To his new surprise he found he had 
fallen — by chance, as a modern historian would say — on a 
cousin of Isaac's. Bewildered by this succession of surprises, 
and wondering what the end would be, he waited while she 
ran home to show her jewels and tell of her adventure. 

The rest is soon told. Laban's miserly soul was even 
more delighted with the golden gifts than was his sister. 
He thought that they could not have too much of guests 
who paid so well for hospitality, and ran out to the well to 
bring Eliezer back with him. But the trusty old servant 
would not so much as eat a meal till his business was done. 
He told his story, who he was, whence he came, his mas- 
ter's name, his errand, his prayer at the well, and God's an- 
swer to it. He ended by preferring his request for the 
hand of the maiden, whose turn it now was to be bewil- 
dered. Laban very piously submitted to the Lord's will. 
" The thing proceedeth from the Lord," said he. " Let her 
be thy master's son's wife as the Lord hath spoken." I 
fancy that the sight of the ten camels, and the packs they 
carried, quickened his piety somewhat ; and his submission 
was rendered easier when he saw them unpacked, and " the 
servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, 
and raiment," and gave them with such profusion of gen- 
erosity to Rebekah, and all the members of her household. 
For an old miser was Laban, and a cheat besides, who a 
few years after drove a hard bargain with his sister's son, 
when he Avas in love with Rachel, and, after making him 
work seven years for his prospective wife, succeeded in 



ELIEZEIfS PBA TEB. 43 

doubling his term of service by a scandalous trick on the 
unwary youth. 

As to Eliezer, he was too impatient to get home again 
with his prize to wait for the delays which Oriental eti- 
quette prescribed. Rebekah was of one mind with him. 
So it could not have been long after, when, as Isaac, in 
a quiet, thoughtful mood, was walking by himself at even- 
tide to meditate, he saw a caravan approaching, and the 
wife whom Eliezer had brought back with him alight to 
meet her lord. A beautiful woman she was, and from 
the first Isaac was well pleased with the old servant's 
choice. The marriage was a true union of hearts. Per- 
severance mated to Cheerfulness makes a good match, 
and, if we interpret the Hebrew names, this was the match 
between Rebekah and Isaac. The wife took the dead 
mother's place. "And Isaac brought her into his mother 
Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife ; 
and he loved her ; and Isaac was comforted after his moth- 
er's death." 

The story of Isaac and Rebekah is not only interesting 
because it affords a striking illustration of the Oriental 
wedding customs of past ages, but also instructive, be- 
cause it exemplifies both the power of prayer and the prin- 
ciples upon which it should be offered. Eliezer's commis- 
sion, his journey, the scene at the well, the betrothal, the 
presents, the final consummation of the wedding, all carry 
us back to the most remote antiquity. The earnest wish 
of the bereaved patriarch that his only son may have a 



44 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

godly wife, his confidence in his tried and trusty servant, 
the oath he administers, Eliezer's faithful fulfillment of his 
trust, his confidence in Abraham's God, and his touching 
prayer when the critical moment arrives for action, all 
point up to him who offers to be our guide as he was the 
guide of Abraham and Eliezer. 

There are many persons who feel a sort of timidity in 
coming to God in prayer with the difficulties and perplexi- 
ities of their ordinary life. They are often told that in the 
presence of God they ought to put all worldly thoughts 
out of their mind. Actually to carry them to him seems 
a sort of profanation. The child very properly hesitates 
about bringing to his father, when he is busy with more 
important matters, questions about mere toys and sports. 
We feel perhaps as though God were concerned with af- 
fairs of such momentous import that it was a kind of in- 
trusion to trouble him with the trivial details of our daily 
life. 

But nothing is trivial to God which is of consequence 
to us. He is not so absorbed with the affairs of state that 
he can give no time or thought to the minor concerns of 
his children's life. Eliezer did not misjudge him in ask- 
ing for aid in choosing Isaac's wife. Jacob did not mis- 
judge him in asking deliverance from the threatened as- 
sault of Esau. David had no such hesitation when he said, 
" By my God have I leaped over a wall." Christ did not 
so interpret him when he said, ^^ Whatsoever ye shall ask 
in my name that will I do." Whatever it is right to wish 
for it is right to pray for. 



ELIEZEB'S PBAYEB, 45 

Nor has the day of God's counsel and guidance passed 
away. It is true the world has emerged from its child- 
hood. It walks no longer in leading-strings. Humanity 
is thrown more, so to speak, on its own resources. But it 
is not orphaned. The oracles are not silent. Urim and 
Thummim are not departed from the temple; only now 
every heart is a temple to God. In every soul the oracle 
of God witnesseth. God did not cease to guide Israel 
when Moses died. Dreams, visions, heavenly voices, angel 
visitations have ceased. But God is not therefore silent. 
Eliezer neither heard an audible voice, nor saw a celestial 
vision. He expected no miracle. But God guided him no 
less than Moses, or Joshua, or Gideon. He who desires 
only to do God's will need never be long at a loss to know 
it. Events are his ministers, our teachers. Only for the 
most part we are like Balaam, bent on our plans, deter- 
mined he shall guide us where we want to go. If we blun- 
der, it is generally because, whatever we say with our lips, 
in our hearts we reverse Christ's prayer. Our real peti- 
tion is, " Not as thou wilt, but as I will." 

But trust in God does not take the place of common 
sense. I have read stories of devout Christians carrying 
their perplexities to God, then opening their Bible, and 
taking the first verse they lighted on as an indication of 
his will. But I never found in the Bible any authority 
for this use of it. It is no sibyl's book, no conjurer's cards. 
This was not Eliezer's way. He exercised his own best 
judgment, then asked God's blessing on it. Piety is a 
poor apology for intellectual laziness. Even in the littlest 



46 OLD TESTAMENT 8HAD0W8. 

tilings God works out our salvation for us only when we 
work it out for ourselves, with the trembling and fear of 
eagerness. If the compass had been discovered in the days 
of Moses, Israel would never have seen the pillar of cloud 
and fire. It is said of Mr. Spurgeon, that when he was first 
applied to, to inaugurate an orphan asylum, by a lady 
who put into his hands several thousand pounds for the 
purpose, he hesitated. He perceived that it was a great 
undertaking, that it would require a large expenditure of 
money as well as of time. At last he devoted a day of 
fasting and prayer to the consideration of the subject. He 
resolved to undertake the enterprise only in case God 
should put into his hands a farther sum adequate to com- 
mence it. Within twenty-four hours he received by post 
from an unknown donor the required sum, to be appropri- 
ated by him, in his discretion, for Christ's cause. He ac- 
cepted God's answer. The asylum was founded. It is 
thus God directs those who look to him for guidance. Life 
itself becomes luminous. Ways open in which God means 
that we shall walk. Ways are hedged up before us from 
which he would turn us aside. 

Take counsel, then. Christian reader, from the story of 
Eliezer and the answer to his prayer. Carry your daily 
affairs to God. Ask his guidance in every emergency. 
Expect discoveries of his will. Let the promise of his 
help quicken all your faculties. Act for yourself energet- 
ically. Judge for yourself thoughtfully. Look unto God 
trustingly. Then will God both act and judge for you. 




JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREX. 



JOSEPH'S STAFF. 49 



lY. 
JOSEPH'S STAFF. 

TS every man the architect of his own fortunes ? Or is 
there a " divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them 
as we may V Do we blindly stumble on where chance, or 
fate, or luck, or our own occasional glimpses of the future 
may guide us ? Or is there one who is the Way — a Shep- 
herd who leadeth those that trust in him " in the paths 
of righteousness for his name's sake V The Bible gives to 
this question no more illustrious answer than it affords in 
the story of Joseph. That story is so marvelous in its 
transformations of fortune that it almost taxes our creduli- 
ty. Yet it is so life-like in all its wonderful detail that it 
refutes skepticism. It is marvelous only because we see 
the completion of God's plan, which usually his providence 
hides from ns. 

Jacob seems to me the least attractive of the three patri- 
archs whom history always groups together. In him first 
appear the hard lines of that wily, selfish, calculating char- 
acter which popular opinion attributes to his descendants. 
He inherits from his mother's family a mercenary disposi- 
tion. It is intensified by his mother's teaching and exam- 
ple. The story of his dealings with Laban is the story of 
two cunning tricksters trying to overreach each other. He 

D 



50 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

watches his opportunity io drive a hard bargain with Esau 
in his extremity. By an artifice, which no sophistry can 
palliate, he tricks him out of his father's blessing. When, 
twenty years later, he meets the brother, who through 
the long separation has been nursing his wrath, the same 
calculating nature still appears in his attempt to appease 
him by presents of cattle and camels. Even his piety takes 
at first the form of a sort of profitable venture. Listen to 
his first prayer : '^If God will be with me, and will keep 
me in this way that 1 go, and will give me bread to eat 
and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's 
house in peace ; then shall the Lord be my God." And this 
was the end of Jacob's dream, and the ladder, and the an- 
gels, and the vision of the Lord, and the promise of God to 
him and to his seed. Out upon such piety. This is but 
poor stuff for a soul when compared with Abraham, who 
was willing to leave country, kinsfolk, home, all, to be the 
friend of God ; or with Joseph, who, a slave, a prisoner, an 
outcast in a foreign land, though dishonored because of his 
integrity, yet never disowned his God or sullied his con- 
science. Yet withal Jacob has the virtues of an industri- 
ous trader — energy, thrift, patience, perseverance ; virtues 
which Joseph inherits from him, and of which he makes 
good use in time of exigency. 

Eeal human nature is made up of curious contradictions. 
Strangely conflicting master-passions struggle for the vic- 
tory, A bright gleam in the seemingly sordid soul of 
Jacob is his love for Kachel. A rare woman is she, a rare 
marriage is theirs — rare certainly in the Orient, where it 



JOSEPH'S STAFF. 51 

is generally an alliance of families, not a union of hearts. 
Tliere is the romance of real love curiously commingled 
with the story of trade and even trickery. Jacob finds his 
own wife, sets his heart upon her, earns her by his own la- 
bor, thinks no price too great to pay for her. When at 
last she is his, he clings to her with a love which finds al- 
most no parallel in his age. His affection never wearies. 
It never loses the dew of its youth. When she dies he 
transfers his heart's love to her children, Joseph and Ben- 
jamin. When he at last lies down to die, it is with her 
name upon his lips, with the memory of her love brighten- 
ing his past. 

Oh, the bitter, bitter curse of polygamy — man's corrup- 
tion of God's ordinance. Oh, the jealousies it engenders, 
the family feuds it produces, the hate, and bitterness, and 
shame it entails. The jealousy which Jacob's preference 
awakened between the sisters, Leah and Rachel, descended 
to their children. The sons of Leah hated the son of their 
mother's rival — hated him the more because the father's 
love for the wife became the inheritance of her child. They 
were not the ones patiently to brook fancied wrong. Sim- 
eon and Levi, at least, were men of hot passions, who hesi- 
tated not at wild and reckless deeds. So when the father, 
ignorant of their jealousy — or, at least, never dreaming of 
the lengths to which it might carry them — sent Joseph to 
the fields where they fed their flocks to inquire of their 
prosperity, unnatural as was their proposed crime, it was 
quite in keeping with what we know of their character 
and the turbulent times in which they lived, that they 



52 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

should conspire to murder liim. How, by a stratagem, 
Reuben saved his brother's life — how Judah, who pos- 
sessed something of his father's mercenary nature, succeed- 
ed in turning their purpose of revenge into profitable chan- 
nels, by selling Joseph to one of those caravans of traders 
whose successors are to be seen to-day wending their way 
over the same road — how the brothers returned home with 
the coat, dipped in blood, summoning this silent but sub- 
orned witness to tell to their father the lie they had not 
the courage, with all their wickedness, to frame into words 
— and how Joseph himself was carried up to Egypt, and 
there sold toPotiphar, chief of executioners, the high sheriff 
of the kingdom — all this is too familiar to need scarce even 
this recalling here. 

There were other reasons than those of birth for Jacob's 
partiality for Joseph. Wherever he went he made friends. 
There was something in his air and bearing that command- 
ed confidence, ensured regard and even affection, and caused 
almost instantly the greatest trust to be reposed in him. 
He carried in his face, I fancy, as truly great men some- 
times do, a sort of letter of credit, which said, more plainly 
than any letter could from any quarter, however influen- 
tial. You can safely trust this man. Doubtless other 
slaves of Potiphar, seeing Joseph so quickly promoted to 
be steward — other prisoners, seeing him taken from the 
dungeon to be under-jailer — yea, all Egypt, seeing him 
called from the prison to be made prime minister in the 
kingdom — marveled at the Hebrew lad's "good luck." 
But the mystery of this " luck" we are able partly at least 



JOSEPH'S STAFF. 53 

to solve. And one secret of it doubtless was a character 
so resolute for integrity that it uttered itself by his very 
mien, in a language which the dullest appreciated, though 
they might not clearly comprehend. 

Then Joseph was somewhat of a fatalist. He never 
forgot those wonderful dreams of his youth, never forgot 
the bowing sheaves of wheat, and the adoring sun, and 
moon, and stars. He had faith in this dream as in a 
promise of his father's God, and faith therefore in himself 
and his future. 

It is a poor sort of fatalism which makes men fold their 
hands and wait for fortune. Joseph's faith in Grod and 
his helpful Providence was of a very different sort. Be- 
cause of it his ambition never lost its hope, nor his con- 
science its courage. He never despaired, never wavered. 
And there were eras in his life when he needed some such 
buttress to keep him from falling. If one might ever yield 
to distrust of God and despair for the future, this mere lad 
of seventeen might have done so, sold away from home, a 
slave in that land of intolerable bondage — Egypt. But 
Joseph's ambition did not desert him. A slave, he would 
still be such a slave as Egyptian task-master never had be- 
fore. By the fidelity of his service he justified the confi- 
dence which his face demanded. Suddenly deprived of 
position, honor, every thing, and thrust, under false accusa- 
tion, into that most hideous of loathsome and terrible 
abodes — an Egyptian dungeon — he goes to it with the 
same sublime and unfaltering calmness, refutes the false- 
hood by the same eloquent face, and becomes a prince even 



54 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

in prison. Lifted to the loftiest pinnacle wMcli fortune, 
perhaps, ever bestowed npon a boy of plebeian parentage, 
he carries into the court of Pharaoh the same energy, the 
same foresight which had made him steward in the house 
of Potiphar and under-jailer in the prison of Egypt. He 
waits for no flood-tide to float him on to fortune; but he 
watches carefully to seize and use it well and wisely w^hen 
it comes. In such fatalism there is no evil and much 
good. 

Such a man, sustained by such a faith, is incapable of 
surprises. Joseph never loses his self-possession. Disaster 
never prostrates, prosperity never intoxicates. His calm- 
ness is something sublime, almost supernatural. He offers 
no defense when Potiphar's wife accuses him of the crime 
she herself had attempted. He receives the royal sum- 
mons to the court as might a prince who hourly expected 
it, and takes time and thought to shave and dress that he 
may go in attire suitable for the royal presence. " They 
brought him hastily out of the dungeon ;" but " he shaved 
himself, and changed his raiment." 

Mark, too, what steadfastness of principle this unwaver- 
ing faith in God and his word inspires in Joseph. He 
never flies false colors. By bitter experience he learns how 
false, as a worldly maxim, is the proverb, Honesty is the 
best policy. "With him, however, honesty is a principle, 
no mere policy ; and he never thinks of compromising it 
because it makes against him. " Behold my master wot- 
teth not what is with me in the house, and he hath com- 
mitted all that he hath to my hand ; * * * how, then, can 



JOSEPH'S STAFF. 55 

I do this great wickedness, and sin against God V A court- 
ier, summoned to court, would have at least kept his re- 
ligion in the background, remembering that the Church 
was mistress, and the priesthood the autocracy of Egypt. 
Joseph proclaims it in the first sentence he utters : '* It is 
not in me ; God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." 
Verily, faith so invincible, so calm yet so determined, so 
ready to act yet so patient to wait, deserves the rare reward 
that it received in Joseph's case. It would be difficult to 
find its parallel even among the remarkable lives that con- 
stitute so large a proportion of the Bible. 

See Joseph, then, made prime minister over the richest, 
wisest, and most magnificent kingdom in the then known 
world. It is quite as often the minister as the monarch 
who governs the state. Pitt, not George the Third, was 
the real ruler of England. Richelieu, not Louis the Thir- 
teenth, was the master of Prance. Joseph becomes, in fact, 
though not in name, absolute master in a realm whose gov- 
ernment has always been that of unmitigated despotism. 
To maintain such a position for a quarter of a century is 
itself a test of greatness. To maintain it, a foreigner, over 
a nation that despises foreigners as the Egyptians did ; to 
maintain it, a monotheist, over a nation whose idolatrous 
faith was so inwrought into the national life as it was in 
Egypt; to maintain it, executing a policy of heavy and 
burdensome taxation, not for present use but for future 
contingencies, this must have required a political sagacity 
such as only belongs to great genius. Cromwell, prime 
minister of Spain in the palmiest days of Jesuitism, would 



56 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

hardly involve a greater political and religious contradic- 
tion than Joseph the prime minister of Egypt. 

The seven years of plenty, however, pass. The royal 
granaries are built. The taxes are levied. The stores of 
provisions for future needs are gathered. And the He- 
brew slave, still a mere youth — for when a hundred years 
of age was the prime of life, he of thirty was but a strip- 
ling — is clothed in the w^hite robes of regal state, wears 
the signet ring of Egypt's imperial despot, whose mark all 
Egypt recognize as the sign manual of unquestioned au- 
thority, rides in the royal chariot in state, second only to 
him whose servant he seems to be, whose master he really 
is, and is heralded wherever he goes by the courier, whose 
descendant still clears the way for royal personages through 
the narrow and crowded streets of Cairo. 

At length comes the famine. 

Oh, the horrors of an Egyptian famine. The pen falters 
in its attempt to portray what the pen of Dante and the 
pencil of Dore would scarce suffice adequately to illustrate. 
The clouds hold back their accustomed treasures from the 
distant hills where the Genius of the Waters takes its 
rise. Yearly this mother of life spreads itself generously 
over the fertile delta, which furnishes food for so many 
thousand mouths. For seven years it intermits its hereto- 
fore regular charity. Spring passes without seed-sowing; 
Summer without growths ; Autumn without harvests. The 
rainless lands grow sere, and dry, and parched. All vege- 
tation withers and dies. No winged commerce brings from 
more favored countries food for the starving. The cattle, 



JOSEPH'S STAFF. 57 

unfed, grow lean, weak, sickly ; stagger tkrougk a few 
months ; tken die. The poor soon consume the little store 
their own previous providence has accumulated. They 
eat carrion, corpses, dogs, dung, any thing. Whole villages 
are deserted. Emigrants flee from town to town in vain 
hope of succor, till their feeble limbs can carry them no 
longer, then drop down to die, unburied, uncoffined, and 
unknelled. The highway is strewed with the bleached 
bones of the dead, as though it had been the scene of some 
fearful battle or yet more fearful retreat. The people, 
crazed by the terrible and protracted calamity, prey upon 
one another. Little children are slain as sheep for the 
shambles. Kidnappers infest the streets of cities, and seize 
upon the unwary, lassoing them from upper-story win- 
dows, and killing them for food. The severest penalties 
are unable to check these unnatural crimes. The criminals 
are publicly burned alive. Their flesh is seized by the 
throng which gathers to witness their execution, and is de- 
voured, thus ready roasted, with horrible greed. 

Such is an Egyptian famine ; not as the pen of romance, 
but as the pen of history portrays it. Twice in the Chris- 
tian era this fearful calamity has fallen upon that ordinari- 
ly fertile land. We borrow our picture, almost our very 
words, from eye-witnesses of this incredible, unutterable 
horror, of which the Bible tells us only that " the land of 
Egypt, and all the land of Canaan, fainted by reason of the 
famine," and that the cry of the people came up to Joseph, 
*' Give us bread, for why should we die in thy presence V 

That cry was heard. The Providence of God, and the 



58 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

iDspired foresight of Josepli alleviated, if it did not wholly 
prevent the public distress. The royal granaries were 
thrown open. The famished people were fed. Other lands 
had long been accustomed to flee in time of drought to 
Egypt, which, nourished at the breast of her mother, the 
mountain ranges of interior Africa, rarely knew hunger. 
The story of her marvelous supply traveled far and wide. 
'^ And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy 
corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands." 
Among these travelers came at last the ten half-brothers 
of Joseph. One brother alone remained at home — Ben- 
jamin, the only other son of Kachel. 

This was the only one Joseph wanted there. He nour- 
ished no revenge, but he felt no affection for his fratricidal 
brethren. The very sight of their faces was unutterably 
painful to him. He would fain bring Benjamin to Egypt 
to share his prosperity with him, and leave the would-be 
murderers to go their way. This at least seems to me to 
be the secret reason of his singular self concealment, and 
that otherwise inexplicable stratagem with the money and 
the cup. 

Nothing affords a more illustrious example of Joseph's 
power of self control than his mastery of himself in the ex- 
ecution of his plan. No story of romance equals in dra- 
matic interest the interviews between the brother and his 
betrayers. No elaborate word-painting could rival the 
power of the simple etching which the Bible gives us of 
these scenes. We stand in the court. We see the play of 
passion. We feel in our own hearts the tumultuous beat- 



J0SEPW8 STAFF. 59 

ing of the strong man's repressed emotion. The appear- 
ance of his brethren does not startle him out of his self re- 
straint. He notes at once that he is unrecognized. He 
preserves his disguise. "He made himself strange unto 
them, and spake roughly unto them." He compels them 
to tell him of the welfare of Jacob and Benjamin, yet asks 
no question that might betray him. He forces from them 
a reluctant promise to bring Benjamin with them when 
they return. The consciences of his brethren wring from 
them the tardy confession to each other, " We were verily 
guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the anguish 
of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear." 
He makes as though he understood not their saying, and, 
for that purpose, carries on all his interview by an inter- 
preter. Reuben's reproaches of his brethren bring before 
him the whole scene in the fields of Dothan. He still 
hides his feelings, going aside to weep the tears he can con- 
trol no longer. 

At length they depart. Patiently he waits for time to 
consummate his designs. "When Benjamin at length ap- 
pears in court, it is with difficulty he controls his long 
pent-up heart, yet still suffers himself to make no betray- 
ing utterance. He contrives the arrest of the one brother 
whom he loves, and orders the acquittal of all the rest. 
His plan is near its consummation. But when Judah, hot, 
passionate, bloody, yet with all the virtues as well as the 
vices of impetuous courage, pleads with impassioned elo- 
quence, not for Benjamin, but for the aged and already 
thrice-stricken patriarch — when he depicts the sorrow of 



60 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

Jacob at tlie loss of Joseph, and tlie unutterable agony 
wliicli tLe loss of Benjamin will surely occasion him — 
when he finally offers himself a ransom in the young lad's 
place for the father's sake, Joseph can maintain his self-re- 
straint no longer, and he breaks forth into uncontrollable 
weeping, while he makes himself known to his brethren, 
and attemjDts to assure their hearts by the half truth, " It 
was not you that sent me hither, but God ; and he hath 
made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house." 

It is not necessary for our purpose to trace the history 
of Jose23h to its consummation. It is sufficient barely to 
recall the affecting meeting between the patriarch and his 
long-lost son ; the interview between the father of the Prime 
Minister and his royal master ; the solemn hour when the 
venerable Jacob gathered about his dying bed his family 
of children and o^randchildren to rive them a last blessino^ ; 
and the farther prosperous administration of Joseph, until 
he, too, was gathered at a rij^e old age to the grave of his 
fathers, and buried, in accordance with his last request, in 
the land which, after years of servitude and suffering, his 
descendants were to inherit as their own. 

The story of Josej^h is one of the most dramatic and ro- 
mantic in sacred or profane history. It has not onl}* been 
made the theme of many a sermon, song, and story in mod- 
ern literature, traces of it are also to be found in modified 
forms in the Koran, in the canonical books of the Arme- 
nian Church, in the pages of Justin, even in the hiero- 
glyphics and remains of Egypt. Its moral lies upon its 



JOSEPH'S STAFF. 61 

surface. There is a virtue better than self-reliance. It is 
reliance upon God : reliance in times of adversity, calamity, 
distress; reliance which enables the soul to cry, "We are 
troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; we are per- 
plexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; 
cast down, but not destroyed :" a reliance which incites 
every faculty to a more healthful, because a more hopeful 
activity in times that call for action ; which strengthens 
integrity in hours of bitterest temptation ; which inspires 
the soul with invincible fidelity in the administration of 
every trust, " not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as 
the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the 
heart;" and which sustains the drooping courage in pa- 
tient waiting upon God when hope long deferred maketh 
the heart sick. 

Wearied and dispirited Christian, waiting with folded 
hands the redemption of the Lord, has not the story of 
Joseph's indomitable energy a lesson for thee ? Rise. Fill 
to its full thy present sphere. It can not be lower than 
that of the Hebrew slave, a prisoner in an Egyptian dun- 
geon. God helps those who help themselves. Rarely does 
he send his angel to give deliverance to the disciple who 
sleeps away the hours which should be spent in prayer 
and watching. Despairing Christian, bewildered in the 
storm that beats so pitilessly upon thee by thy doubts of 
God's goodness and care, has Joseph's story no lesson of 
hope for thee? Are thy misfortunes greater than those 
which for thirteen years followed the son of Rachel ? 
Hast thou waited longer or more patiently than he the 



62 



OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 



fruition of that love that to our eyes often seems long in 
ripening I 

Give to the winds thy fears. 

Hope on ; be undismayed. 
God hears thy sighs ; God counts thy tears ; 

God shall lift up thy head. 

Through waves, and clouds, and storms 

He gently clears thy way ; 
"Wait thou his time ; so shall this night 

Soon end in joyous day. 





THE HEBREW FOUNDLING. 



THE GREAT QUESTION. 55 



Y. 

THE GEEAT QUESTION. 

A MONG the names which redeem human nature from 
the dark pall of sin and shame which envelops the 
race, and give a true interpretation to the divine declara- 
tion that God made man in his own image, none is more 
illustrious than that of Moses. His name is brightest of 
all the stars that illumine the dark night which, from 
the days of the Garden of Eden to those of the Garden 
of Gethsemane, settled over the earth. Notwithstanding 
the lapse of three thousand years, it is still undimmed by 
time, which effaces so much that seems to its own age to 
be glorious, and buries in oblivion so much that is really 
ignominious. The founder of a great nation, his name will 
be held in lasting remembrance so long as the promise of 
God holds good, and the Hebrew race preserves, though 
scattered to the four quarters of the earth, its sacred rec- 
ords and its national identity. The founder, under God, 
of those principles of political economy which underlie 
every free state, his name will be more and more honored 
as those principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which 
were the foundation of the Hebrew commonwealth, are 
more generally recognized and adopted by the voice of 
mankind. More resplendent even than his inspired genius 

E 



QQ OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

are that moral courage, that indomitable and nnselfisli pur- 
pose, and that manly yet humble piety, which are far too 
seldom united to a tenacious ambition and a powerful in- 
tellect. Deservedly honored as the greatest of all states- 
men, he is yet more to be honored for those sentiments of 
commingled patriotism and piety, which lead him to reject 
a life of apparent glory, though real disgrace, for one of 
seeming ignominy, but real and undying glory. 

Although Moses, alone of the heroes of the Old Testa- 
ment, has written the record of his own life, we know very 
little of his childhood. The uncertain traditions of Jew- 
ish and heathen history furnish us with more ample mate- 
rial than his own pen. Unfortunately, these traditions are 
more ample than reliable, and afford little else than the 
ground-work for what is, after all, chiefly a conjectural bi- 
ography. Combining, however, the history which his own 
pen has given us, the later Jewish beliefs as they are in- 
corporated in the address of the martyr Stephen and in 
the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, the somewhat 
mythical traditions which Josephus has embodied in his 
romantic but unreliable history, and the fragmentary ref 
erences to the great law-giver, which scholastic research 
has exhumed from the works of heathen authors, we are 
able to construct a tolerably complete and measurably ac- 
curate history of the birth, the early education, and the 
native character of the founder of Judaism. 

Joseph's influence died with him. Following the Pha- 
raoh whom he served was one, the records of whose reign 
have led the ablest Egyptologist to characterize him as " a 



THE GREAT QUESTION. 67 

superstitious sovereign, devoted to the priests, and a con- 
templative entliusiast." The priesthood resumed their old 
supremacy. The national prejudices of the Egyptians, 
against which Joseph had endeavored to guard his father's 
house, resumed their sway. Israel was reduced to the con- 
dition from which Joseph had emerged. The brethren of 
Joseph had sold him into slavery. Their descendants 
drank" of the cup which they had prepared for him. The 
cruel punishments, the inhuman ill usage, which still char- 
acterizes the despotism of Egypt, remains, a mournful illus- 
tration of the simple statement of the Scripture, " There- 
fore they did set over them task-masters to afflict them 
with their burdens." The echo of " their cry by reason of 
their task-masters" is still to be heard in the melancholy 
antiphonal wail, sung in a weird chorus by. the bands of 
workmen and workwomen on the banks of the Nile, "They 
starve us, they starve us, they beat us, they beat us." " But 
there's some one above, there's some one above, who will 
punish them well, who will punish them well." Never- 
theless, despite ill usage, the Israelites multiplied rapidly. 
It seems to be the tendency of slavery to increase the 
number of the enslaved, and to diminish the number of the 
masters. To prevent the possibility of an insurrection, an 
edict was issued to slay all the male children. The peo- 
ple of Grod were threatened with extirpation by the sword 
of Osiris. 

Such was the condition of Egypt, such the hopeless serv- 
itude of Israel, when Moses was born. His beauty at birth 
seems to have been somewhat remarkable. At all events, 



68 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

the mother thought so. She kept the child concealed un- 
til concealment was possible no longer. She then deposit- 
ed him in a basket made of the papyrus, which grew in 
great quantities by the brink of the Nile. The Egyptian 
had a superstition that this papyrus was a protection 
against the crocodile — the river demon. Perhaps she 
shared this fancy. She set her daughter to watch what 
should become of the little waif For herself, she' could 
neither bear to witness his death, nor endure the suspense 
of utter ignorance of his fate. 

Whether she contrived to put her babe where the Egyp- 
tian princess, coming for her customary bath, would find 
him, we are not told. Find him she did. Her woman's 
heart responded to the infant's helpless cry. She resolved 
to save it. Josephus attributes to the infant rare and pre- 
cocious powers of discernment. He says it refused the 
breast of one or two Egyptians before Miriam ventured to 
propose sending for a Hebrew nurse. The suggestion, at 
all events, was made, and acceded to. Miriam called the 
babe's own mother. So the Providence of God gave back 
the child to its true, its natural guardian. 

He grew up a boy of rare beauty — " was a goodly child," 
"was exceeding fair." Passers-by — so the Jewish legend 
goes — stopped to look upon him with wonder. Laborers 
rested from their toil to refresh themselves with a glance 
at his bright and beautiful face. The princess adopted 
him as her own. The Child of the Waters became an 
Egyptian prince. So soon as he was weaned he left his 
mother's arms. Every art was employed to make him for- 



THE GREAT QUESTION. 69 

get his Hebrew origin, neutralize the influence of his He- 
brew blood. His home was in the palace. Egyptian 
priests became his tutors. He possessed a mind as re- 
markable as his body, and rapidly acquired the learning 
of a kingdom not only then the most learned in the world, 
but that wherein later art and science received its first 
nourishment. For at the breast of Egypt modern civiliza- 
tion was nurtured. There is no reason to doubt that he 
was faithfully instructed in the precepts and principles of 
its religion. There is a probability that he was initiated 
into the higher orders of the priesthood. It is certain that 
he was intended to become a prince and a ruler. He ac- 
quired familiarity with the laws of Egypt and the princi- 
ples of its jurisprudence. He not only acquainted him- 
self with the civilization of his age, he added to it. " He 
learned arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, medicine, and mu- 
sic. He invented boats and engines for building — instru- 
ments of war and of hydraulics — hieroglyphics — division 
of lands." His military achievements outshone, in popu- 
lar estimation, his intellectual attainments. He conducted 
with great success a campaign against the Ethiopians, and 
returned in triumph, doubtless the most popular man in 
the kingdom, despite his plebeian origin. This son of the 
unknown Hebrew mother, adopted into the royal family 
of Egypt, and connected by marriage with the court of 
Ethiopia, was second in the kingdom only to Pharaoh him- 
self. 

Yet he never forgot his birth, never dissociated himself 
from his own despised people. He was always thoroughly 



70 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

a HebreWo When lie was but a child — so the story runs 
— the king put upon his brow the royal diadem, in token 
that he ratified his adoption into the royal family. The 
child cast it contemptuously on the ground, and trampled 
on it with his feet. As he grew older, he rejected, with ill- 
concealed aversion, the religion which the priests of Egypt 
endeavored to inculcate, and worshiped by himself, with- 
out the temple walls, an unknown God. " He taught that 
the Egyptians were not right in likening the nature of God 
to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans, nor even the 
Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the form of men.. He 
held that this only was God — that which encompasses all 
of us, earth and sea ; that which we call Heaven, and the 
Order of the world, and the Nature of things." So Strabo 
tells us. The priesthood are never tender of those who 
despise their authority or deny their teachings, and rarely 
scrupulous in their methods of getting rid of an adversary. 
More than once Moses almost miraculously escaped assassi- 
nation. Nothing but the intervention of Thermutis, his 
adopted mother, prevented him from falling a prey to the 
anger of the king, who, if we are right in supposing him to 
be Kameses H., was not a monarch to brook insubordina- 
tion in another, or to curb the passion of envy in himself 

Such is the story of Moses's life, as we gather it from 
the uncertain traditions of the past. It is now quite im- 
possible to sift out the true from the false in those shadowy 
and somewhat mythical tales; but they indicate at least 
this much, that the youth gave promise of his future rare 
power, and that his impetuous temper, not yet chastened 



THE GREAT QUESTION. >J\ 

by forty years of solitude in the wilderness, and his un- 
compromising patriotism, which fitted him so well to be- 
come, later, the leader of his people, and the former of their 
national institutions, brought him into constant collision 
with as haughty, as powerful, and as unscrupulous a hier- 
archy as ever dishonored humanity^ burdened a state, and 
disgraced the very name of religion. It is certain that 
fairer earthly prospects never allured a man of conscious 
power than invited Moses to cast in his lot with Egypt. 
It is certain that a sterner path of duty never frowned 
more forbiddingly, with less promise of honor or emolu- 
ment, than that which called him to be true to the faith 
of his fathers and the people of his birth. Every argu- 
ment by which trimmers and time-servers have been accus- 
tomed, in all ages, to justify their recreancy, addressed it- 
self to him with peculiar potency. As an outcast, he could 
do nothing but suffer an unendurable slavery with the 
people whose lot he chose to make his own. As a prince, 
honored in Egyptian palaces, he might, at least, alleviate 
burdens which he would be in any event powerless to re- 
move. By accepting his royal adoption he dishonored no 
name and sundered no ties, since none bound him to a peo- 
ple with whom practically he had never mingled. By re- 
jecting it, he must seem indifferent to the ties which bound 
him to his adopted mother, to whom he owed position, ed- 
ucation, life itself. Thus sentiments of almost filial affec- 
tion, enforced by the apparent welfare of his own race, 
mingled with baser motives of concealed and unconscious 
self-interest in urging him to forget the land of his nativ- 



72 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

ity, and become in trutli a child of his royal patrons. Faith 
in God has perhaps never been more severely tested than 
it was in Moses's case. Uncompromising patriotism has 
perhaps never been more gloriously witnessed than by 
his choice, who " refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's 
daughter, * ^ ^ esteeming the reproach of Christ greater 
riches than the treasures in Egypt." 

For it is quite certain that he was never recreant to his 
truly noble, but seemingly ignominious parentage. In the 
palace, as later in the wilderness, he was openly and avow- 
edly a Hebrew in religion and in all his sympathies. It 
was no mischance, no sudden and impetuous act of an un- 
regulated temper, that drove him from the throne, and 
wrested from his hand the sceptre. He cliose " rather to 
suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a season." These stories of his reject- 
ing the breast of an Egyptian nurse, of his trampling un- 
der foot the Egyptian crown, of his offering up his de- 
votions outside the Egyptian temple, would have been told 
only of one who, almost from the cradle, rejected the land 
of his adoption, and clung to the land of his nativity. 

At length, between the adopted prince and the Egyptian 
court there occurred an open rupture, 

Moses had long borne in silence the ^vi^ongs of his peo- 
ple, which, keenly as he felt them, he was powerless to rem- 
edy or to avenge. Passion, long-schooled, grows sometimes 
overmastering. At length, one day, a peculiar injustice 
provoked his ire beyond control. He interfered, defended 
the Hebrew slave, slew the Egyptian master. The latter 



THE GREAT QUESTION. 73 

he buried beneath the sand. The Hebrew, perhaps, told the 
story of his deliverance. At all events, it became known. 
When, shortly after, Moses endeavored to pacificate a quar- 
rel between two Hebrew brethren, one of them taunted 
him with his previous act. " Intendest thou," said he, '' to 
kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian^" Egypt was no 
longer safe. He had placed in the hands of the priesthood 
a weapon they would not be slow to turn against him. 
He fled the kingdom. The prince became again a peasant. 
The military leader of the Egyptian empire became a 
herdsman among the mountains of Midian. 

It is not necessary to follow farther his strange fortunes. 
It is certain that when he fled from the royal court he had 
not the faintest anticipation of the future God had in store 
for him. When wandering through the trackless wilder- 
ness of the Sinaitic peninsula, he had no thought that God 
was preparing him to lead Israel through this same desert 
land. In abandoning the sceptre of one nation, he never 
imagined that he was to be the founder of another. He 
only knew that he would rather be a Hebrew herdsman 
than an Egyptian prince ; that he preferred to follow God 
in the wilderness rather than to walk Godless in the most 
alluring path which luxury carpets, culture strews with 
flowers, and influence and honor brighten with their sun- 
shine. When at length God called him to his allotted 
task, with the self abnegation which belongs to true merit, 
he shrank from the undertaking. " Oh, my Lord," said he, 
" I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast 
spoken unto thy servant ; but I am slow of speech and of 



74 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

a slow tongue." " Oh, my Lord, send, I pray thee, by the 
hand of him whom thou wilt send." 

Eefusing the crown, Moses has received it. Mankind 
have already forgotten the name of the Egyptian monarch 
whose successor he might perhaps have become. Despite 
the royal works this Pharaoh accomplished at so great 
a cost, history has engraved his name so lightly that, ef- 
faced by time, scholarship spells it with difficulty, and pro- 
nounces it with uncertainty. The name of Moses, more en- 
during than the tables of stone on which, by divine com- 
mand, the fundamental precepts of the Hebrew law were 
preserved, more enduring than even the awful mount 
where he met Jehovah and talked with him face to face, 
will live on in imperishable renown so long as humanity 
continues to honor the heroism of a true self-sacrifice. 
While the world stands, the story of Moses — his rejection 
of rank, purchasable only at the expense of fidelity to his 
own convictions, and his deliberate choice of a life of hon- 
orable obscurity, together with its marvelous and unex- 
pected results — this will be told from generation to gener- 
ation, a striking exemplification of the truth of Christ's 
paradox, " the last shall be first, and the first last." 

When Joshua had crossed with Israel the Jordan, and 
had completed his campaign against the aborigines whom 
the Hebrews dispossessed, he gathered the people in the 
fertile and romantic valley which lies between Mounts 
Grerizim and Ebal ; he rehearsed before them the wonders 
God had wrought for his people ; he demanded that they 



THE QBE AT QUESTION. 75 

then and there renew their allegiance to Jehovah, or then 
and there rescind their previous vows. " Choose you," said 
he, " this day whom ye will serve." When Elijah sum- 
moned the priests of Baal to the test, and built under the 
shadow of Mount Carmel the altar, and called down from 
heaven, to consume the sacrifice, the fire for which they 
had implored in vain, he set before the awe-stricken Israel- 
ites the claims of the true God and the false. "How long 
halt ye," cried he, " between two opinions T To every per- 
son there comes such an hour, when, with unusual distinct- 
ness, the voice of God repeats this solemn adjuration, 
" Choose you this day whom ye will serve." 

Such an hour was that when Mohammed stood on the 
mountain above Damascus, and, gazing on the glorious 
view, turned away from it with the words, " Man has but 
one paradise, and mine is fixed elsewhere." Such an hour 
was that when William of Orange resisted the specious ar- 
guments of Margaret, the persuasions of Berty, the plead- 
ings of his own honest but misguided friend Egmont, and, 
breaking with the court party, whose honored representa- 
tive he doubtless might have become, irrevocably commit- 
ted himself to a life of self sacrifice and a martyr's death, 
in loneliness so utter that he could write, " I am alone, with 
dangers menacing me on all sides, yet without one trusty 
friend to whom I can open my heart." Such a critical 
hour, too, was that when Napoleon proved himself unwor- 
thy of his genius, and incapable of the trust which the Prov- 
idence of God seemed ready to repose in him — the hour 
when he sacrificed principle to policy, and, under a poor 



76 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

pretense of duty to tlie state, pronounced a decree by which 
he in vain attempted to sunder the tie which bound him 
to the only wife whom God or history will ever recognize 
as in truth his own. Life is full of such witnesses ; illus- 
trious examples of a noble choice and an unflinching in- 
tegrity, or solemn warnings against an ignominious and a 
recreant decision. 

The issue of the choice is not always what it was in the 
case of Moses. Religion is no secret road to preferment. 
Christ makes no promises of prosperity. He calls for vol- 
unteers. He offers no bounty-money. Nay, many a Mo- 
ses dies, his life unrecorded save in the Lamb's book of 
Life, his name unknown save to Him who never forgets. 
" Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward," is no 
keen satire. It is a literal truth. The rugged path of 
duty leads often to the coronation of an undying fame. 
But it is not always so. Wisdom, Solomon tells us, has 
" length of days in her right hand, and in her left hand 
riches and honor." Nevertheless, she must be wooed and 
won for her own sake, not for that of her fortune. She 
often presents herself in the garb of poverty, and brings, 
in this life, only a dowTy of suffering. It is no meaning- 
less warning, that of the Master, " Which of you, intending 
to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the 
costj whether he hath sufficient to finish it." 

The artist, Thomas Cole, has represented this truth upon 
canvas. A rocky, precipitous mountain divides the pic- 
ture. Upon the right, a road leads through flowery mead- 
ows, by a smooth and delicious river, toward a prospect 



THE GREAT QUESTIOK 77 

whose beauty, veiled in a golden haze, is more alluring 
than one could be which spoke more to the senses and less 
to the imagination. Upon the left, a rugged path leads 
up the mountain side. Clouds and darkness envelop it; 
while here and there, through rifts, are seen dark chasms, 
and a fierce torrent leaping over sharp and jagged rocks. 

Before you, reader, lie these diverging paths. In your 
life there is, or has been, the solemn crisis-hour which de- 
termines all the future. To you God repeats the solemn 
adjuration, " Choose you this day whom ye will serve." 
Befog this question as you may, it is still the question of 
your life, on whose decision time and eternity depend. The 
question is not, indeed, always simple. But to every one 
the question comes. These diverging paths seem some- 
times, at the outset, to be parallel to one another. But 
one is the path of duty. The other is the path of pleas- 
ure and preferment. One leads through the fertile plains 
of Egypt. The other seems to end in the wilderness of 
Paran. Mephistopheles does not usually acknowledge his 
name, as he did to Faust. But it is always the Prince of 
evil, however disguised, that makes the offer, "All these 
things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
me." Christ points to the rugged road — his feet have 
marked it with his own blood — his Cross shines through 
the darkness and the clouds which overhang it — while his 
voice says, with tenderness, yet with divine authority, "Fol- 
low thou me." To follow him will cost something, may 
cost much. To pioneer that path cost him how great a 
sacrifice. But to turn away, what does that cost ? honor, 



78 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

manliness, immortality, heaven, God. When selfishness 
and sense entice, be honest with yourself — count the cost. 
Before you reject the poverty of Israel's fellowship for 
even a princely inheritance in Egypt, ponder the question 
which Christ addresses to you, "What shall it profit a 
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul V 

Why haltest thus, deluded heart, 

Why waverest longer in thy choice ? 
Is it so hard to choose the part 

Offered by Heaven's entreating voice ? 
Oh, look with clearer eyes again, 
Nor strive to enter in in vain. 
Press on ! 

Omnipotence is on your side, 

And wisdom watches o'er your heads, 
And God himself will be your guide, 

So ye but follow where he leads ; 
How many, guided by his hand, 
Have reached ere now their native land. 
Press on ! 





THE HUMBLED KING. 



TEE GBEAT DELIVEBANCE, gl 



YL 

THE GEEAT DELIYEEAl^CE. 

A MARVELOUS story is that Arabian legend, prod- 
uct of the wondrous Oriental imas-ination, of the 
fierce and deadly battle between two opposing genii, em- 
bodiments of good and evil — incarnations of the spirits of 
Ormuzd and Ahriman. A real truth is veiled in this weird 
story of singular self sacrifice, whereby the guardian angel 
delivers the transformed and bewildered princess at the ex- 
pense of her own life, consumed by the fatal fires with which 
she has been assailed by her foe who perishes with her. 
Thus the Savior of mankind delivers the race, bewitched 
by the arts of Satan and transformed from the image of 
God, yet dies himself in delivering us from sin and death. 
But more marvelous is the history which the pen of Mo- 
ses has transcribed, of that strange and awful conflict be- 
tween the God of Israel and the gods of Egypt, which re- 
sulted in the deliverance of the children of Jehovah from 
the despotism of their heathen task-masters. For that con- 
flict was not merely one between the Hebrew race and the 
Egyptian race. It was not merely a trial of skill and 
strength between Moses and the priesthood. It was a 
waged battle between Jehovah and Osiris ; the most mark- 
ed and striking triumph of the true God over those which 

F 



82 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

are no gods, whicli the Bible history affords. In tliat con- 
test tlie very deities of Egypt were converted by the fiat 
of Jehovah into avengers of Israel's wrongs ; and more 
than once the proud Egyptians were compelled to beseech 
the God of the Hebrews to undo the mischief which their 
own divinities were bringing upon them. Their religion 
was, as the religion of the Africans still is, a religion of 
fetichism. Whatever philosophy the learned of the realm 
may have entertained concerning the true nature of the in- 
visible deity — and there is no polytheistic country so hope- 
lessly degraded that God is left utterly without a witness 
in it — the common people " changed the glory of the incor- 
ruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, 
and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." 
They paid their devotions to the sacred waters of the Nile, 
to the cattle that grazed along its banks, to the frogs that 
croaked among its rushes. When, therefore, those waters 
turned to blood, the murrain destroyed those cattle, the 
frogs came forth in quantities so great as to be a burden 
intolerable to be borne, it seemed to Pharaoh and his su- 
perstitious people, if not to the more intelligent and there- 
fore more criminal priesthood, that the very gods of the 
land had either turned against them, or were themselves 
cursed by a higher deity, whose decrees they were unable 
to resist. 

It must have tried the courage of Elijah to face those 
four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, and trust his own 
life, and seemingly the cause of true religion, to a mirac- 
ulous answer to his prayer for fire from heaven. It must 



THE GREAT DELIVEBANGE. §3 

have required all the heroism of Daniel to go down, with- 
out tremor, into the den of wild beasts, and spend the 
long night-hours in their midst. Eare must have been the 
faith of the three Hebrew heroes if they did not tremble 
when the doors of the fiery furnace were opened, that they, 
bound hand foot, might be cast in. But it required faith 
no less invincible, courage no less calm and cool, for Moses 
to return, unarmed and apparently unprotected, to repre- 
sent his people in the court from which he had exiled him- 
self Through all that strange experience, in which he 
contended with the Egyptian priesthood before the king, 
he was apparently at the mercy of the court. The super- 
natural protection vouchsafed by God to Daniel is not 
more marvelous than that which kept closed the mouths 
of the worse than wild beasts into whose lair Moses volun- 
tarily entered. History affords few, if any, more striking 
contrasts of character than that which it portrays in this 
protracted interview between Moses, calm, patient, but res- 
olute of purpose and unflinching in his pursuit of it, and 
the vacillating monarch, promising deliverance at the in- 
fliction of each new plague, and retracting it so soon as the 
plague was removed. We remember the lying pledges 
and broken vows of Charles the First of England, and 
Ferdinand the Seventh of Spain, and wonder not that, in 
the presence of such vacillation, even Moses should lose at 
last all patience, and should go out from Pharaoh " in a 
heat of anger." We see the flashing eye before which the 
ignominious monarch quails, when, to the royal threat — 
"Take heed to thyself: see my face no more; for in that 



84 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

day tliou seest my face tliou shalt die/' Moses replies, 
with language more significant than any previous warn- 
ing, " Thou hast spoken well ; I will see thy face again 
no more." 

In the history of nearly every nation there is a pivot- 
hour on which its destinies seem to centre — an hour to 
which all previous experiences conduct, and from which all 
subsequent experiences issue, and which remains fixed in 
the popular memory, and is ever after celebrated by song, 
by story, or by public festival. Such, in Jewish history, 
was the fourteenth day of Msan. 

When Moses returned to the land of Egypt from his so- 
journ in the land of Midian, Israel had already well-nigh 
forgotten the very name of their fathers' God. " Behold," 
said Moses, " when I come imto the children of Israel, and 
shall say unto them, ' The God of your fathers hath sent 
me unto you ;' and they shall say to me, ^ What is his 
name V what shall I say unto them ?' They had adopted 
the worship, if not the faith of the land of their bondage. 
At the very foot of Sinai they reinstated the golden calf 
of Egypt ; nor was it until after nearly one thousand years 
of varied experiences of war and of captivity that idol- 
atry ceased to be a national sin. They were scarcely more 
ready to listen to Moses than was Pharaoh himself They 
complained bitterly of the first results of his intervention. 
" The Lord look upon you," said they, bitterly, " and judge ; 
because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the 
eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants, to put 
a sword in their hands to slay us." They needed the les- 



THE GREAT DELIVERANCE. g5 

son of the plagues scarcely less than Egypt itself — needed 
as much to learn to trust God as Pharaoh needed to learn 
to fear and obey. 

But with every marvelous plague they had witnessed a 
no less marvelous protection. The murrain had smitten 
both man and beast in Egypt. The residents of Goshen 
had borne, in the midst of the disease, a charmed life. The 
hail had fallen in a fearful and devastating storm. The 
canopy of the Lord had shielded the fields of Goshen. The 
fearful simoom had brought up from the desert, in clouds 
of driving sand, a darkness such as could be felt. A mys- 
tic wall shielded the house of Israel from its invasion ; and 
while Egypt lay enveloped in the supernatural darkness, 
" all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings." 
When, therefore, Moses at length commanded the people 
to make ready for their departure, we may reasonably as- 
sume that, although to sight their deliverance seemed no 
nearer, although Pharaoh showed no sign of relenting, and 
the tenacious priesthood no sign of fear, yet there were few 
Hebrews who did not obey the command of Moses, and 
prepare, with hearts curiously divided between hope and 
unbelief, for the emancipation for which they had waited 
so long, and with hope so often disappointed. 

A strangely solemn night that must have been. 

Egypt has already forgotten Moses's menace, " All the 
first-born in the land of Egypt shall die." Hitherto plague 
had followed close on plague. Now they have ceased. 
The priesthood seem to be victorious. The land has rest. 
No sickness gives warning of the approaching doom. No 



gg OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

herald precedes the great king, saying, "Prepare to meet 
thy God." The Egyptians sleep. 

But in the land of Goshen the darkness of the night 
witnesses, yet conceals, a strange scene of sleepless activity. 
In every household the lamb has been slain. On every 
lintel the significant blood has been struck. Within, the 
lights are burning, the table is set ; in the silence of anx- 
ious expectancy the hurried meal is eaten. With girded 
loins, with sandaled feet, with beating hearts, Israel awaits 
it knows not what. And so the night wears slowly away. 

Suddenly a wail arises on the still air of midnight. 
With the same mournful cry the inhabitant of Cairo still 
announces to his neighbor that death is in his household. 
But this is not the wail of a single stricken heart. It is 
echoed from house to house. It rises in a mournful fune- 
real chorus of many commingled voices. Egypt sleeps no 
more. There are runnings to and fro, and priests and 
physicians are sent for, and vain attempts are made to suc- 
cor the dying or resuscitate the dead. Angry curses, loud 
and deep, are muttered against the king, who has already 
withstood the importunities of the people, " How long shall 
this man be a snare unto us ? Let the men go, that they 
may serve the Lord their God : knowest thou not yet that 
Egypt is destroyed?" Messengers hasten to the house- 
holds of the Israelites to urge them to depart. The word 
at midnight comes from the court itself to Moses and 
Aaron, " Bise up, and get you forth from among my peo- 
ple, both ye and the children of Israel ; and go, serve the 
Lord, as ye have said." 



THE QBE AT BELIVEBANCE. §7 

There is no delay — no need of any. Israel is already 
prepared. Slaves need but little preparation. Their flocks 
and herds are soon gathered. Their few clothes are quick- 
ly got together. The vacillating king has no time afforded 
him to retract his word again, were he ever so much in- 
clined. The setting sun saw Israel in bonds. The rising 
sun witnesses every chain broken, and the people already 
well advanced in their journey toward the Eed Sea. 

''^And the people took their dough hefore it ivas leavened^ 
their kneading -troughs being hound up in their clothes upon 
their shoulders. And the children of Israel did according 
to the word of Moses. ^ ^ ^ And the children of Israel 
journey ed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thou- 
sand on foot that were men, beside children^ 

The memory of that night is still preserved by a nation- 
al festival, which is to-day the most notable one in the 
whole Jewish calendar. In the mutations which time and 
expatriation have produced, the Paschal feast of modern 
Judaism bears only a remote resemblance to it in its orig- 
inal institution. But in the Holy Land, where manners 
and customs in the nineteenth century retain the form im- 
pressed upon them long before the opening of the Chris- 
tian era, this very scene is still repeated, with the slain 
lamb, with the blood marking not only the lintel of the 
door, but the forehead of every participant, with the mid- 
night meal of roasted meat and tasteless unleavened bread 
eaten standing, the loins girt about, and the feet shod with 
sandals. Still the children ask the meaning of this singu- 



88 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

lar service. Still tlie Samaritan replies, in the very words 
whicli Moses dictated, " It is tlie sacrifice of the Lord's Pass- 
over, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel 
in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered onr 
houses." 

With different forms, and with different meaning, this 
festival still lives on in Christendom as in Judaism, the 
only remnant of that magnificent system of ceremonialism 
which the Cross has not destroyed. The temple, the altar, 
the living sacrifice, the flowing blood, the consecrated priest- 
hood, have all passed away, never to be restored. The 
Paschal feast alone remains, perpetuated in a new form, to 
commemorate, for all mankind, a greater deliverance from 
a more galling servitude, by a sacrifice more terrible, into 
a freedom grander and more enduring. 

Egypt still sleeps. The voice of God that warned in 
the Garden of Eden, " In the day that thou eatest thereof 
thou shalt surely die," is forgotten. The priests of Pha 
raoh still scornfully ask, " Where is the promise of his com 
ing V Still the justice of God whets the avenging sword 
Still a careless world eats and drinks with the drunken 
having no ears to hear the caution, " Watch, therefore ; for 
ye know not what hour your Lord doth come." 

Still it is true as of old, " Without shedding of blood is 
no remission." !N"ot a virtuous life, nor a correct creed, nor 
a Hebrew parentage, nor a careful compliance with the 
as yet imperfect ritual which the unformed Jewish nation 
had received from the patriarchs, could bar the door against 
the angel of death. There was but one bolt he could not 



THE GREAT DELIVERANCE. 39 

turn back ; but one barrier he could not pass — the mark 
of blood upon the lintel and the posts. It is the Lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world that alone wards 
off the penalties of divine justice. Whoever hath accejDted 
this sacrifice slain for him lives in the land of Goshen. 
Whoever has not is a dweller in the land of Egypt. 

But it was not enough that the lamb was slain. The 
blood must be upon the lintel and the two side posts. The 
blood of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of 
the world, must be applied to the heart. It must be evi- 
dent in the life. The Israelite must put the mark of his 
nationality upon the outer casement of his house. He must 
designate himself publicly a member of a proscribed and 
despised race. The Christian must carry in his life the 
mark of his adoption. " Whosoever shall confess me be- 
fore men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the 
angels of God ; but he that denieth me before men, shall 
be denied before the angels of God." A man may be a 
Christian, it is often said, and belong to no church. Doubt- 
less. Thank God, there are not a few who cast out devils 
who follow not us. But no man can be a Christian and 
conceal his Christian faith, his Christian principles. There 
is no room in the discipleship for Joseph of Arimathea so 
long as he is a disciple " secretly for fear of the Jews." No 
man can wear the garb of Egypt and enjoy the protection 
of Israel. 

For Israel's safety there was one condition — only one — 
faith. Of faith there was one sufficient evidence — only 
one — obedience. The Israelite must believe the warning 



90 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

and the promise — so far believe it as to slay the lamb, and 
put the blood -mark on the door. No skepticism that 
failed to keep him from that one act was fatal, l^o faith 
that fell short of that could save. Many a soul has trust- 
ed in the atoning blood of Jesus that could tell you noth- 
ing of the philosophy of the plan of salvation. Nay, de- 
spite much learned writing on that philosophy, it remains 
as insoluble a mystery as ever. Could Israel tell why the 
mark of blood should be efficacious to exorcise death ? 
Could the poisoned Hebrew, writhing in death-agony, ex- 
plain to you the hygienic principles upon which a look at 
a brazen serpent would cure him ? Could Naaman advise 
you of the chemical principles in the Jordan which proved 
so efficacious to wash away leprosy ? Could Lazarus offer 
you an intelligible interpretation of the mystery of his own 
inexplicable resurrection ? Neither can philosophy explain 
how it is that '' the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth 
us from all sin." What then ? God forbid that I should 
refuse to arise from death when the voice of Christ cries, 
" Lazarus, come forth ;" that I should refuse to bathe in the 
sacred river when the Great Prophet bids me " wash and 
be clean f that I should refuse to look on Him who was 
made in the likeness of sinful flesh when the voice of di- 
vine mercy calls to me from the Cross, " Look unto me and 
be ye saved ;" that I should refuse to accept the sacrifice of 
the Lamb of God, and apply to my own heart that pre- 
cious blood which has given so many millions deliverance 
from the chains of sin and the fear of death when he bids 
me come unto him. 



THE GREAT BELIVEBANCE. 9^ 

" We are saved by hope." Nevertheless, the promise of 
hope is a poor assurance of safety. Doubtless there w^ere 
Hebrew mothers v^ho, having fulfilled the divine com- 
mand, v^aited in perfect peace the fulfillment of the divine 
promise. Doubtless there vs^ere other mothers who, hav- 
ing put the mark of blood upon the door-posts, pressed 
their children to their bosoms as never before, and waited 
through the long night, listening for the steps of the death- 
angel, with hearts in which hope and fear contended, in a 
wild and passionate struggle, for the mastery. Yet both 
were safe. 

Oh, fearing, fainting Christian ! who art never sure, 
whose faith sees the truths of God as the half cured blind 
man saw " men as trees walking," in whose experience the 
promises of God are but vague and illy-trusted shadows, 
who art forever torturing thyself with thine own doubts — 
if thou hast heard the voice of Jesus, if thou hast accepted 
his love, and sought forgiveness and redemption in his 
blood, though the night be long, and the wail of humanity 
sore and bitter, and doubts and fears multiply, thou art 
safe. Such doubts torment, but never destroy. For you 
is written those remarkable, those precious words, " If we 
believe not, yet he abideth faithful ; he can not deny him- 
self" 

The Paschal sacrifice was followed by a Paschal feast. 
The Lamb that was slain must also be eaten. " Except," 
says Christ, " ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
his blood, ye have no life in you." " If any man have not 
the spirit of Christ," says Paul, " he is none of his." It is 



92 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

Christ, not only slain for us, it is Christ dwelling in us, 
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, who saves. Trope 
and fio-ure are exhausted in the New Testament to exem- 
plify this truth. We are the branches, he is the vine ; 
we are the temple, he is the indwelling Spirit ; we are 
travelers, he is the way ; we are naked, he is the garment ; 
we are soldiers, he is our armor. Only he is Christ's who 
follows the sacrifice with the feast ; to whom Christ is dai- 
ly imparted ; who is able, at least in some measure, to say, 
" The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith 
of the Son of Grod, who loved me, and gave himself for me." 

Like the Israelite, the true Christian partakes of this 
solemn feast with his loins girded, his shoes on his feet, 
his staff in his hand. It is not a feast of mere merry-mak- 
ing. It is a needful preparation for a pilgrimage. Ee- 
ligion is more than a creed, more than an experience, it is 
a life. One can hardly read the story of this midnight 
meal, taken in haste, and in expectancy of a summons to 
depart, without being reminded of the words of Jesus, " Let 
your loins be girded about and your lights burning, and 
ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord." 

The issue of all this strange scene, the great fact which 
its future repetition commemorated, was the emancipation 
of the Hebrew race. In a single night the shackles were 
struck from the wrists of six hundred thousand men. A 
nation was born in a day. 

There are a great many persons whose idea of redemp- 
tion seems to be that, in the far future, for Christ's sake, 
God will remit the penalty which, by our sins in this world, 



THE GREAT DELIVEBANCE. 93 

we have incurred. Meanwliile, life goes on unchanged ; 
there is no less power in temptation, no less attraction in 
the ways of sin, no new strength to resist, no divine in- 
spirations, no supplanting of old desires with new and no- 
bler aims. There is to be seen in the print-stores of large 
towns and cities a popular picture entitled " The Eock of 
Ages." In the midst of a yeasty sea there stands a cross 
of rock. To it there clings, sole survivor of some fearful 
wreck, a woman, with the tenacious grasp of despair. The 
waves leap up to sweep her away from her last shelter, 
while, from below, the hand of a demon of the sea seems 
seeking to grasp and drag her back. And this is accepted 
as the type of trust in Christ. This despair, clinging in 
the last wild hope to a barren rock, that can put forth no 
energy itself to save, this is offered, and widely accepted, 
as a picture of the Christian's refuge. 

" And is this all he meant when thus he spake, 

' Come unto me ?' 
Is there no deeper, more enduring rest 

In him for thee ? 
Is there no steadier light for thee in him? 

Oh! come and see." 

Is there no present, all-powerful Savior ? Does Christ's 
redemption wait in the future? Is the Christian's hope 
like Israel's hope of Canaan while yet in the wilderness ; 
like the soldier's hope of victory while the battle is still 
hot; like our hope of a much-loved friend's return still 
absent and long delaying ; like our hope of spring in the 
midst of winter ? 

Nay, Christ comes to set us free from the law of sin and 



94 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

death; to do what the law could not do; to preach de- 
liverance to the captives; to set at liberty them that are 
bound. He comes to break the power of old habits, to 
destroy the embattlements of pride, to dissolve the chains 
of avarice, to conquer passion, to subdue appetite, to sup- 
plant vanity, to make of the soul "a new creature." He 
is called Jesus " because he saves his people from their 
sins.'''' A thief is not saved because he is pardoned out of 
the Penitentiary. He is saved when he is reformed, and 
the thievish propensity is supplanted by honest aims. A 
sinner is not saved because he is delivered from the fear 
of death and hell. He is saved when the desire of sinning 
is taken away, and a new and nobler life is enkindled. 
This is the great deliverance which we celebrate in our 
Paschal feast. 

Christ ransoms, Christ feeds, but, grandest truth of all, 
Christ frees — frees us from the fetters we have welded on 
our own wrists. To the cry of humanity, " Who shall de- 
liver me from the body of this death V " for the good that I 
would I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that I do," 
the answer of thousands of voices, rising from every peo- 
ple, kindred, and tribe, in one sublime choral, is. Thanks 
be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. The true 
child of God, pardoned through the blood of Christ, fed 
upon the body of Christ, standing ready as a servant to 
fulfill the will of Christ, following without questioning the 
lead of Christ, though it conduct him to the very edge of 
the Red Sea, and seem to insure his destruction, beholds 
his pursuing sins overwhelmed and washed utterly away, 



THE GREAT DELIVERANCE. 



95 



and, able to do all things through Christ who strengthen- 
eneth him, sings henceforth, in exultant strains, " The Lord 
is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation." 
Forgiveness, food, freedom, these are the three great truths 
which the Paschal feast foreshadowed in the hour of its 
first institution, and which that Paschal feast, converted 
into a memorial of Christ's undying love, still teaches by 
its sacred emblems and its imperishable service. 





MOSES STEIKIXG THE ROCK. 



THE BIVEN BOCK. 99 



VII. 
THE EIYEN EOCK 

npHERE is doubtless danger of allegorizing too far in 
endeavoring to find spiritual meaning in all the in- 
cidents of the Old Testament. The Bible is not an alle- 
gory. The princi23les of interpretation which we employ 
in reading Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress are not applicable 
to the books of Moses, or to the histories of the scribes and 
the prophets. They are what they purport to be — verita- 
ble history. But history itself is sometimes symbolical. 
This is peculiarly true of the Scriptures. There is not a 
little in the Old Testament which has a double meaning — 
one that lies upon the surface, and is discoverable by su- 
perficial reading ; the other, which is hidden in trope and 
metaphor, and is discoverable only by a faith which has 
already been enlightened by the clear revelations of the 
New Testament. This we apprehend to be Paul's meaning 
when he says that a veil was upon the heart of the people, 
so that they could not understand when the writings of 
Moses were read. They did understand the letter. They 
were superstitiously scrupulous in regarding it. But they 
did not comprehend its prophetic and symbolic character. 
They understood its command of the Sabbath day, and 
were exceedingly strict in observing it. But they knew 



100 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

nothing of that unbroken rest, that perpetual Sabbath of 
the soul, which he who is in Christ enjoys, and of which 
the Jewish Sabbath was an emblematic promise. They 
understood the story of the creation, that in six days God 
made heaven and earth, and all that is in them. But of 
that new creation, wherein God makes of a chaotic and 
purposeless soul a new creature in Christ Jesus, they knew 
nothing. They understood, doubtless correctly, the history 
of the origin of the Paschal festival, and they never suf- 
fered the appointed time to pass without observing, with 
literal exactness, all the forms which had been observed on 
that first night when Israel stood sandaled and ready to 
depart, and ate the roasted lamb and the unleavened bread. 
But they did not seek to understand the real significance 
of a service whose prophecies were far grander than its 
reminiscences, and which foretold a deliverance immeasur- 
ably more sublime than that national deliverance which 
Israel celebrated. Of the Lamb slain from the foundations 
of the world they knew nothing. When Christ, risen from 
the dead, met the disciples on the road to Emmaus, utterly 
discomfited and in despair because of the crucifixion of 
their Lord and master, " Oh, fools," said he, " and slow of 
heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. ^ * ^ 
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to 
enter into his glory." We should certainly be even more 
amenable to this charge if, despite his teaching, we failed to 
find in Moses and the prophets those foreshadowings of the 
suffering Savior which he chided them for passing by un- 
noticed. 



THE BIVEN MOCK. 101 

Among the symbolic incidents of the Old Testament 
which, when they are thus read, interpret the New, there 
is none about which the Christian heart has more delight- 
ed to linger than about that of Moses striking the rock. 
The true interpretation of this fountain-rock in the wilder- 
ness is so plain, and its true significance has been so point- 
ed out by the inspired writers themselves, that it is almost 
impossible to be blind to its meaning. "They drank of 
that spiritual Eock that followed them; and that Kock 
was Christ." 

Israel had witnessed with increasing wonder the rising 
wrath of God against their oppressors, in plague following 
plague, until at length the cry of unutterable anguish at 
the bed of death in every Egyptian house had risen in one 
terrible funereal chorus, and Pharaoh had called for Moses 
in hot haste, and bade him and his people get out of the 
land lest all the inhabitants be stricken. They had stood 
in terror as the dusk of evening gathered about them, a na- 
tion of unarmed slaves, unfitted for war, encumbered with 
women and children, before them the waters of the Red 
Sea, upon their right the mountain crowding close to the 
shore, behind and to the left of them the hosts of Pharaoh, 
with horses and chariots, cutting off all possibility of re- 
treat. They had seen with awe those waters separate ; they 
had seen them mass themselves in walls on either side ; 
they had marched through in long procession, wdth hearts 
in which dread of the massive waves, fear of their pursu- 
ing foes, and solemn awe at the majestic might of their di- 
vine protector were commingled in an experience than 



102 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

wMcli it were impossible to conceive one more strangely, 
more awfully sublime ; they had seen in the gray of the 
early dawn those waters released from the magic spell 
which enchained them ; they had heard the cries of the ter- 
rified and despairing Egyptians mingling with the roar of 
the many waters hasting, at the word of Grod, to devour 
the foe who had so audaciously tempted him. Their 
scanty stock of provision had failed. God had fed them. 
They had come to a bitter spring of unpalatable water. 
God had sweetened it. They had found themselves in the 
midst of a trackless wilderness. God had been their guide 
in pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. They daily 
witnessed wondrous manifestations of his power, and ex- 
perienced wondrous evidences of his tender care. And 
still they doubted. Every new trial proved them false to 
him. 

At length they encamped near the foot of the grand 
but frightful Sinaitic range. They were farther from the 
promised land than when they stood at tlie borders of tlie 
Red Sea. The rocky beds of the mountain streams were 
absolutely dry. Nothing is so dangerous for such a host, 
in such a wilderness, as to be without water. Hunger is 
more endurable than thirst. The passions of the populace 
are always fickle. They murmured against Moses. They 
complained of the God whose commands he professed to 
obey. Their dissatisfaction grew rapidly to serious pro- 
portions. Mob violence was threatened. The life of Mo- 
ses was no longer safe. It is not easy to carry one's self 
with courage in the midst of suck a panic. The faith of 



THE MIVEN ROCK. 103 

their inspired leader faltered. He felt the responsibility 
of this people. He knew not how to bear it. His prayer 
to God has almost the tone of reproach in it — "What shall 
I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone 
me." 

It almost seems as though God had purposely delayed 
that he might try the faith of Israel. He now intervened, 
and bade Moses take the rod which had already proved so 
efficacious; the rod at which the water had turned to 
blood, and the river had sent forth its throng of frogs, the 
dust had turned to lice, and the murrain had cursed the 
stricken cattle ; the rod at whose beck the waters of the 
Eed Sea had opened to give Israel deliverance, and had 
closed again to make for the Egyptians a grave ; and with 
this he bade him strike the rock that frowned forbiddingly 
upon the camp which was gathered at its foot. Moses 
complied with the divine command. The rock opened its 
closed portals. From the frowning mass poured forth 
God's supply of abounding* mercy. The thirsty and panic- 
stricken camp drank of the marvelous spring. And a new 
witness to God's loving care, a new rebuke to man's faith- 
lessness, was added to the marvelous history of God's cho- 
sen people. 

It is not merely a desert wilderness and the divine sup- 
ply that gives to this incident its peculiar meaning. It is 
the fact that the rock, smitten^ gave forth those treasures 
which lay hidden till the hand of man had struck it. It 
is Christ that saves, but Christ only as he is crucified. 



1Q4 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

The Kock of Ages gives to us the living waters, of which 
if a man drink he shall never thirst again, only as it is 
smitten by the hand of man. The spear of the soldier is 
the rod of Moses, at whose thrust there flows forth that 
stream of blood and water which is for the redemption of 
the whole Israel of God. 

It needed no divine revelation to assure us that God 
loves. The language of nature and the experience of our 
own hearts are an adequate witness to this truth, so simple 
as to be almost self-evident. That which gives to the 
Bible revelation of God's character its peculiar significance 
is the fact that it reveals him one who affords the highest 
exemplification of Christ's precept, " Love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
and pray for them which despitefully use you and perse- 
cute you." The revelation of God's love, suffering for the 
sake of those that despise it, though so simple, is yet so 
august, so sublime, that our selfish hearts can not compre- 
hend it, and our shallow philosophy obscures or denies it. 
Christ crucified is to-day as much as ever " unto the Jews 
a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;" as 
much as ever the power and wisdom of God to those that 
comprehend it. 

The true coronation of character is love. The true test 
of love is self-sacrifice. He knows not how to love who 
knows not how to suffer for love's sake. The love that 
costs nothing is worth — what it costs. The noblest names 
in history are those, the records of whose lives are written 
in their own blood. To suffer is grander than to do : 



THE RIVEN BOCK. 105 

this has passed into a proverb. For illustrious lives we 
ransack, not palaces, but prisons. If we were to select the 
sublimest period in the American Revolution, it would not 
be the capture of Burgoyne or the surrender of Lord Corn- 
wallis. Far more luminous with imperishable glory is 
that wintry march across New Jersey, when every mile 
was marked with blood from the naked feet of the half 
clad soldiery, or that fearful encampment at Valley Forge, 
when, through the long wintry months, hope and faith 
waited on patience, and America proved her right to free- 
dom by demonstrating her capability of suffering untold 
horrors for its sake. That Russian mother who threw, one 
after another, her children to the pursuing wolves, and es- 
caped herself, may have loved her flock ; but a true moth- 
er would have cast herself from the sled, and have rescued 
her little ones, by appeasing with her own body the appe- 
tite of her pursuers. 

No type can adequately express the incomparable love 
of God. But we are not without types which illustrate 
the truth that the highest expression of love is self sacri- 
fice. Of self sacrifice the Cross is the sublimest of all il- 
lustrations. It has cost God something to love. He at- 
tests the power of bis love by the anguish of a riven heart. 
The Cross is the sublime symbol of a love which nothing 
can adequately interpret. The figures of the Bible are not 
to be subjected to a legal examination. It is a cold heart 
that comes to the Cross of Christ only to catechise him 
who hangs upon it. But certainly there is — one might al- 
most say there can be — no higher manifestation of that 



106 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

love than that which is afforded by the sacrifice of a well- 
beloved son. The boy who dies on the field of battle suf- 
fers for his country far less than the mother who holds 
back the bursting tears, and vainly strives to conceal, be- 
neath a calm exterior, her breaking heart, as she bids him 
God-speed when he leaves his home. 

During the late Civil War, at the second call for volun- 
teers, a young man of my flock left college and enlisted. 
He was the pride of his circle, the beloved of many friends, 
the reliance of his ^vidowed mother. He was made adju- 
tant of his regiment by the almost unanimous suffrage of 
his fellow-soldiers. He was their pride, and ours. Tear- 
ful and sad at heart, his mother gave him up to the service 
of Grod and his country. How we watched his subsequent 
history; how our hearts beat as we read of the costly 
valor of his regiment, and of him never dishonoring it. 
With what love his mother's heart followed him to West- 
ern Virginia, and to the Army of the Potomac, and through 
all that fearful campaign that culminated in the critical 
struggle at Gettysburg. Then followed long silence. Lines 
of travel were interrupted ; mails were irregular ; even the 
telegraph — broken, or too full of government dispatches — 
was mute. At length, one dread morning, came the short, 
crisp, telegraphic message, " Your son is mortally wound- 
ed. He begs his mother to come to him." Then followed 
the desolate journey, the hours of nursing in camp, the few 
last prayers, the hands of love closing the eyes of the dead, 
and the widowed mother came back with a heart broken, 
and to a home henceforth desolate. Alas ! how many 



THE RIVEN ROCK. 107 

mothers learned, in a like experience of grief, the measure 
of God's love. For Christ lifts up this picture, and to ev- 
ery father and every mother that has stood weeping over 
the grave of the child he says, " Thy grief interprets God's 
love ; for God so loved the world that he gave his only be- 
gotten Son, that whoso believeth in him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life." This verse, which Luther used 
to call the little Gospel, is, I think, the most sublimely sig- 
nificant text in the Bible. The most significant word in 
that text is the monosyllable so. 

Yes, it is God smitten who saves. He not only does for 
us, he endures for us. It is this fact which makes it true 
that the " unspeakable gift" of God is Jesus Christ our 
Lord ; that the highest glory of God, which gives earth a 
new radiance and heaven a " new song," is the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the earth. 

That lady who, turning away from the life of apparent 
ease and of refined culture which her parentage, her wealth, 
and her position combine to open to her, chooses to remain 
in Africa, consummating, in the loneliness of her widow- 
hood, the work to which, in common with her husband, 
she consecrated her life for Christ's sake and the Gospel's, 
has given immeasurably more than any one can whose 
gifts, however generous, are all in money. Nothing that 
God has given can compare with this gift of himself 
Nothing in this gift so adds to its lustre as that it is be- 
stowed upon unappreciative hearts. "God commendeth 
his love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ 
died for us." Jesus does but interpret the divine nature 



108 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

when, in answer to tlie nails driven through his quivering 
flesh, he utters the prayer of love, " Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do." Oh, miracle of love ! 
From the riven rock flows the well-spring. The justice of 
God, smitten by the hand of man, becomes a fountain of 
mercy. The garden, the trial, and the cross call not down 
the thunderbolts of an avenging wrath. They supply a 
perishing people with the waters of life. 

" God is love," says the apostle. We might almost trans- 
pose the apothegm, and say " Love is God." That is, it is 
love which renders him worthy of our worship. It is not 
the power which made the worlds and allotted them their 
courses ; it is not the wisdom which orders all of life, and 
suffers not even the minutest detail to escape his notice ; it 
is not even those aesthetic qualities, which have produced 
in divinely-created forms of beauty the types of all art and 
all architecture, that render God worthy " to receive power, 
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, 
and blessing." It is that his love is such that nothing seems 
to him too sacred to be sacrificed to the welfare of others. 
We sometimes look longingly for the day when in heaven 
we shall see the full glory of God, which now an impene- 
trable veil seems to hide from our vision. We need not 
wait. The glory of heaven is reflected from earth. It is 
not in the green fields, the perennial fruits, the crystal sea; 
it is not in the flashing domes, the golden streets, the pearly 
gates ; it is not in flowers more beautiful, groves more Ar- 
cadian, music more celestial than earth knows that the 
glory of heaven consists. "The Lamb is the light thereof" 



THE RIVEN BOCK. 109 

" The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
showeth his handywork," says David. But the cross of 
Christ, which David never saw, showeth his heart-work; 
and the song which the morning stars sang together in 
the hour of their birth is forgotten in that new song which 
the redeemed of the Lord sing unto the Lamb who hath 
bought them with his most precious blood. 

"Heaven is dull, 
Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burns 

In fluent, refluent motion, 
Unquenchably along the crystal ocean ; 
The springing of the golden hai-ps between 
The silver wings, in fountains of sweet sound — 
The winding, wandering music that returns 
Upon itself, exultingly self-bound 
In the great spheric round 

Of everlasting praises : 
The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene, 
Visibly flashing from the supreme throne 

Full in seraphic faces, 
Till each astonishes the other, grown 
More beautiful with glory and delight ! 
My heaven ! my home of heaven ! my infinite 
Heaven-choirs ! what are ye to this dust and death, 
This cloud, this cold, these tears, this falling breath. 
Where God's immortal love now issueth 

In this man's mortal woe?" 



THE FIEBT SERPENTS AND THE BBAZEN SERPENT, m 



YIIL 

THE FIEEY SEEPENTS AND THE BEAZEK 

SEEPENT. 

T> ETWEEN tlie Gulf of Suez on the west and tlie Gulf 
of Akabah on the east lies a vast peninsula, wild and 
picturesque in its scenery, uncultivated, and for the most 
part uninhabited. Not the ice-bound steppes of Siberia, 
nor the remote interior of Africa, nor the yet unexplored 
plains of Central China, present an appearance less attract- 
ive naturally to the common tourist. Yet thousands of 
pilgrims have crossed this inhospitable desert, and myriads 
of books, and letters, and pamphlets have been written de- 
scriptive of it ; and it will stand famous to all time as the 
scene of the strange wandering of the Israelitish people 
from the land of their captivity to the land given them of 
God for their national home. Every site is marked and 
studied ; every locality awakens a thousand strange imag- 
inations by its sacred history or its legendary associations. 
Not least interesting of all these monuments to God's 
wondrous power and yet more wondrous grace is Mount 
Hor, which, like a tower in a giant city, rises above the 
mountain range, of which it constitutes a most conspicu- 
ous feature — a permanent monument to Aaron, who lay 
down for his last sleep upon its summit. A wild, weird 



112 ^LD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

region is tliis, witli great mountain peaks unclad with any 
verdui'e, but beautiful in their own strange and varied 
tints, like massive clouds at sunset ; with wild gorges cut 
in their sides by mountain torrents ; full of rushing water 
in the rainy season, but dry as the desert sand in the sum- 
mer-time ; with green oases of vegetation, that once were 
more frequent and more rich than now, but that at best 
were as islands in the midst of a sea of unclad rock. At 
the foot of this range of mountains lay Israel encamped. 
A long and weary journey their sins had led them. And 
though the air had grown fruitful at God's command, and 
the very dew had turned to manna — though the rocks had 
opened their barred and bolted doors at Moses's rod, and 
water had gushed out for their sujDply, yet it was not 
enough; and they spake against Moses and against their 
God, complaining even of his very mercies : " For there is 
no bread," they cry ; " neither is there any water ; and our 
soul loatheth this light bread." 

Plenty begets forgetfulness of God, but grief brings us 
back to him. 

Out of the mountain fastnesses, and from the shore of 
the now not distant gulf, there comes creeping up that 
most fatal and most dreaded foe of man, the insidious ser- 
pent. These glide every whither. They creep beneath 
the tents. They enter in through the apertures of the 
temporary booths. They glide noiselessly in upon the 
camjDS at night. No guard can protect against them; no 
watch warn of their coming ; no weajDon ordinarily suffices 
to slay them. Groundless complaints give place to well- 



THE FIEBT SEBPENT8 AND THE BRAZEN SERPENT. \\^ 

grounded consternation. In every face sits dread en- 
throned. There is running to and fro ; and the cries of 
the dying, and the bitterer cries of the living, wailing for 
the dead, resound through the night air. Herbs, and med- 
icines, and all known healing agents are called for and ap- 
plied — and all in vain. To the terror-stricken people it 
seems as though this valley was to be their burial-ground, 
and Aaron was to be accompanied to the land of spirits 
by the people unto whom he had ministered in life. Driven 
by fear, Israel, who could not be drawn by gratitude, cry 
unto God for pardon and for succor. They beseech the 
intercession of Moses : " We have sinned, for we have 
spoken against the Lord and against thee ; pray unto the 
Lord that he take away the serpents from us." 

God ever does for us more abundantly than we can ask 
or think. Israel implores only the destruction of the ser- 
pents. God undoes their poisonous work. 

Into the midst of the camp comes the man of God, un 
fearing in the midst of calamity, because he that trusteth 
in God shall not be moved. To him, who has so often 
brought message of deliverance, the expectant people turn. 
At his command a brazen serpent, in the likeness of their 
dreaded foe, is lifted in the air, and borne, perhaps as a 
banner, from tent to tent. " Behold " he says, " God's gra- 
cious answer ; for he is slow to anger, and great in mercy ; 
he will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger 
forever. Look on this and live." And the dull eyes of 
the dying turn toward the sight ; ebbing life begins to re- 
turn; the sluggish blood renews its pulsations; the fe- 

H 



114 ^LD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

vered brow grows cool; the unutterable anguish is alle- 
viated; the burning thirst is quenched; from a thousand 
hearts there springs up the yet unuttered ciy, " Oh life ! 
life! life!" and soon from a thousand tents wells up a 
song of praise to God upon the evening aii\ 

^'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the ivilderiiess^ even so 
must the Son of man he lifted up ; that whosoever helievetJi 
in him should not perish^ hut have eternal lifeP 

In a wilderness more wild than that of Akabah, in wan- 
derings more hopeless than those of Israel, humanity strug- 
gles on toward its land of promise. It has never recovered 
from the bite of the serpent in Eden. The virus spreads, 
secretly, subtly, but surely, through the whole system. The 
dark background of history and experience is this — lost ! 

We are living in a country stricken with the plague. 
Disease is inwrought in the very fibres of our souls. It 
lurks in the very lintels of our doors. It is in the very 
foundation-stones of the earth on which we live. The soul 
bears witness to itself that it is lost to its true life. It as- 
pires to something, it knows not what. The remembrance 
that in our Father's house is bread enough and to sj)are, 
steals sometimes in upon us with sweet invitations to re- 
turn ; reminiscences that are like music wafted over water 
in the summer evening. These very aspirations echo the 
word lost, while they point us to the " hope set before us." 

I have read a legend of the early colonial days of Amer- 
ica which runs in this wise. In the Indian wars which 
devastated the land, a village was overrun. Men, w^omen. 



THE FIERY SERPENTS AND THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 115 

and children were butcliered. Houses, barns, grain, every 
thing was consumed. For an hour the cries of the dying 
echoed among the hills, and the glare of the conflagration 
lighted up the clouds. Then all was over. One blue-eyed 
babe was spared. An honored chief took it under his pro- 
tection. Perhaps he was more merciful than his compan- 
ions. Perhaps a whim seized him to present it to his 
squaw. He carried it home. She nursed it, cared for it, 
trained it. The boy grew up to manhood. He knew no 
home but the wigwam, no life but the barbaric one of the 
woods, no parents but the dark-hued chieftain and his 
wife, no playmates but the red-skins of his adopted tribe. 
The son of a chieftain, he inherited his adopted father's 
place. He filled it with honor. His name was on all lips. 
His Anglo-Saxon blood asserted itself in the calm superior- 
ity which he felt, and which his comrades acknowledged. 
He was bravest of the brave. Judged by all the stand- 
ards of the camp, he was deserving of the honors heaped 
upon him. 

Yet within himself he felt a secret dissatisfaction — he 
knew not why ; a strange yearning — he could not tell for 
what. Dim recollections of another face than that of his 
adopted mother, of another home than the wild one of the 
woods, stirred his soul in dreams and reveries. At length 
another war broke out between the nation of his birth 
and that of his adoption. He led his warriors to the con- 
flict. It was long and hotly contested. Something of his 
own persistence he infused into the savage warriors, whose 
bravery is more impetuous than patient. But the arrow 



II Q OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

of the Indian was no match for the musket of the ^yhite 
man. The savages were forced to retire. They left their 
chieftain wounded, and seemingly dead upon the field. 

There were Christian men in the settlement. They re- 
connoitred the woods to make sure that no savages still 
lurked there, then went out to succor the dying and to 
bury the dead. They were surprised to find a white face 
amonof the Indian host. His bow and his hatchet were 
still grasjDed in his hand. The heart was yet warm. They 
lifted him from the ground. They brought him tenderly 
to their home. They examined and dressed his wounds. 
They watched breathlessly his reviving pulsations. Their 
labors were rewarded ^^ith his life. And when at lenDi;h 
the blue eyes opened and gazed about in wonder, and the 
lips, in Indian accents, asked, " Where am I V they cried 
for very joy that one of their race was saved, not only from 
death, but from barbarism. 

We are in a " far country." Judged by standards of the 
world we may be honorable among men, but he that lives 
without God is lost to his true life. The aspirations of his 
soul are silent vdtnesses to the fors^otten home fi'om which 
he has wandered — to the life of degradation he has adoj)t- 
ed. Though he be a chieftain in his own tribe, he is yet 
lost. Blessed be God, who waits not till, wounded in the 
field of battle, we are left for dead ; who waits not for us 
to arise and go to our Father, but who comes after us ; 
who gives his only begotten Son to die for us ; who heals 
the virus of the serpent by lifting up before us him who, 
though he knew no sin, has yet been made sin for us ; who 



THE FIEBY 8EBPENT8 AND THE BRAZEN 8EBPENT. II7 

was wounded for our transgressions, and by whose stripes 
we are healed. Against the dark background of sin and 
suffering God lifts the luminous Cross of Christ. On the 
pall that envelops a dead humanity he emblazons, in let- 
ters of light, the word life. In the ears of Israel, writh- 
ing in death-agonies, from which no human medicine can 
relieve them, a voice of one mightier than Moses cries, 
" Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved, for 
I am God, and there is none else." 

" What shall I render nnto God for all his benefits to- 
ward me ? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon 
the name of the Lord." 





THE GLEANER, 



THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ. 121 



IX. 

THE BEJSTEYOLEISrCE OF BOAZ. 

1VT0 book has done more to ennoble woman than the 
Bible. Other writings have contributed to amelio- 
rate her condition. The Bible has elevated her character. 
It found her a menial, fulfilling the tasks, obedient to the 
beck, of her sovereign lord. It has made her a queen, 
rightfully sharing his throne, and wielding with him a 
God-given sceptre over the whole animate creation. It 
offers her, indeed, no fulsome flattery. It weaves no chap- 
let of pretty but poisonous praise for her brow. It makes 
no effort to conceal her faults. The woman of the Bible 
is no pure, heaven-descended angel, but a child of sin and 
sorrow, needing with us all the atoning blood of the Lamb 
for her ransom and redemption. The first sinner was a 
woman. Her hand unbolted the door through which sin 
and Satan entered to desolate the world. Among the last 
enemies whom Christ shall conquer is the mysterious scar- 
let woman, " the mother of harlots and abominations of 
the earth." But woman, if she is first in the work of 
death, is the first also in the work of redemption. The 
Son of God, whose lips never could speak to any earthly 
being the name of father, called Mary mother. She who 
unlocked the gates of hell has opened also, for a sin-cursed 



;[22 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

earth, the gates of heaven, and given through her Son free 
entrance to every child of Adam. And when the last en- 
emy, which is Death, shall be destroyed, and the ransomed 
of the Lord shall come from every nation, kindred, and 
tribe to meet him, woman shall still be pre-eminently hon- 
ored, and the most sacred of all earthly ties will be reflect- 
ed in its heavenly prototype, for the Church, when at last 
it is presented faultless before God's throne of grace, " with- 
out spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," shall be known 
throughout eternity as the bride, and heaven itself shall 
rejoice, with joy unspeakable and full of glory, in " the mar- 
riage of the Lamb." 

Among the various types of woman's character which 
the Bible affords us — and nearly every type of womanly 
excellence is to be found within its pages, the singer, the 
preacher, the warrior, the ruler, and, highest and most ex- 
cellent of all, the faithful wife and mother — two possess 
peculiar pre-eminence, because they have christened with 
their names the books which narrate the story of their 
lives. One of these books — an idyl, a poem in prose — is 
the story of a peasant-girl who became mother of kings. 
It is full of a quiet, rural charm which has invested the 
very name of Ruth with a peculiar tenderness. The other 
carries us among courts and court intrigues, in times of 
direst peril, and narrates plots and counter-plots as mar- 
velous and exciting as imagination ever conceived. It is 
the story of a nation saved by the brave fidelity of a single 
faithful woman, who, by her queenly courage, has made the 
name of Esther truly regal through all time. 



THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ. 123 

There is a period of Jewish history, between the occu- 
pation of Canaan under Joshua and the organization of 
the monarchy under Saul, which has been well called the 
middle ages of Judaism. It answers to the dark ages of 
European history and the colonial days of America. The 
people, possessing the faults and the virtues of a primitive 
age, not yet organized into a true nation, though not with- 
out the form of national institutions; occupying a new 
country imperfectly reclaimed from the aborigines, having 
every thing to do — land to till, cities and villages to con- 
struct, institutions to frame, government to organize — were 
almost absolutely without a literature, being as yet quite 
too busy in making a history to find any time to write 
one. It is in these times Ruth lived, and of these dim 
ages of antiquity, almost wholly hidden in the remote past, 
the simple story of her life gives us just glimpse enough 
to make us long for more. 

One of those frightful famines which the peculiar cli- 
mate of the Orient produces, and the marvelous improvi- 
dence of the people aggravates, drove from Canaan many 
of its inhabitants, among them one Elimelech and his wife 
Naomi, who fled across the Jordan valley, hoping to better 
their condition in the land of Moab. They gained noth- 
ing by their removal, however. Elimelech died soon after 
their emigration. Naomi's two sons married daughters of 
Moab, supported their mother a little while by their indus- 
try, then, one after the other, followed their father to the 
grave. The three widows were left desolate. Naomi, no 
longer bound by any ties to the country of her husband's 



124 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

adoption, returned to her native land. One of lier daugh- 
ters-in-law, Kutli, accompanied lier. They were wretched- 
ly poor. The ten years of sojourn in a foreign land seemed 
to Naomi full of bitterness. From comparative affluence 
she had fallen to abject poverty. " Call me not Naomi" 
— pleasant — said she ; " call me Mara" — bitter — " for the 
Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." 

The germ of those elaborate and often admirable pro- 
visions for the poor, which constitutes the glory — and, 
alas ! by their inefficacy or their evil administration, often 
the shame — of Christendom, is to be found in the Mosaic 
legislation. Among other statutes was one which forbade 
the reaper from gleaning in his harvest or his vintage. 
The gleanings should be left for the poor and the stran- 
gers. This law, simple as it was, had some great advant- 
ages. It offered no premium on cunning idleness. The 
strong man could make better wages reaping than glean- 
ing. It gave to the rich no chance for evasion. The poor 
gathered with their own hands the tax for their own sup- 
port. It was the beginning of the barley-harvest when 
Ruth and Naomi entered Bethlehem. Hunger is a hard 
task-master, and they were absolutely empty-handed. Ruth 
offered to go and glean in the fields. Naomi was fain to 
consent. 

The arrival of the bereaved wife and mother in Bethle- 
hem made no little stir in the community, and the rumor 
of her return, and of the self devotion of the daughter who 
accompanied her, ran very quickly through the little vil- 
lage, and came to the ears of Boaz, a distant kinsman. Her 



THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ. 125 

hap was to light upon his field, and he, an industrious 
farmer, who supervised in person the labors of his farm, 
found her there, following the reapers. He was touched 
by this new proof of her filial love, and her child-like trust 
in her mother's God, and bade her glean unfearing of in- 
terruption. He offered her no charity. What she took 
should be her right. But to his young men he added, 
quietly, the command, unknown to her, " Let her glean even 
among the sheaves, and reproach her not ; and let fall also 
some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them 
that she may glean them, and rebuke her not." 

It is not difficult to imagine the scene in that field that 
afternoon : the young men sturdily plying their reaping- 
hoojks ; Euth timidly following after, and looking up with 
glad and almost bewildered surprise as ever and anon she 
comes upon whole handfuls of grain lying in her path. 
Perhaps she thinks that these are very careless reapers, 
and almost doubts whether she ought to gather the grain 
they leave behind them. Perhaps she attributes her good 
fortune to the kindness of the young men, and occasionally 
repays their fancied munificence by a demure glance of her 
bright eyes. But she never once thinks of Boaz, who, a 
little apart, takes a greater delight in her bewilderment 
at what she thinks her " good luck," than he could have 
done in a more ostentatious mode of giving. 

How the singular introduction of Buth to Boaz led to a 
yet more singular courtship and marriage ; how the daugh- 
ter of Naomi became the wife of Boaz and the mother of a 



126 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

royal — yea, a more than royal — lineage, of wliom was Da- 
vid, and, in years long after, born in a manger, in the same 
village of Bethlehem, great David's greater Son — all this 
is told with a detail which affords a striking illustration 
of the manner of that primitive age "when the judges 
judged." But to narrate it here would take us too far 
from our purpose, which is to indicate, in the story of Ruth 
and Boaz, a simple but beautiful illustration of a single 
truth. 

The benevolence of Boaz exemplifies the aphorism of 
Christ, " Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand 
doeth." If, in after years, his young wife ever learned by 
whose direction she enjoyed her unexpected prosperity 
that summer afternoon, surely her gratitude and love must 
have been intensified by the delicacy with which the gift 
was bestowed. To give is as truly an art as to acquire ; 
to give so as to seem not to give, this is the perfection of 
skill in benefaction. Munificent gifts, publicly bestowed 
and loudly heralded, do not constitute the most honorable, 
though they are the most honored form of benevolence. 
We do not sound a trumpet before us when we do our 
alms, but we advertise them afterward. We purchase 
titles of nobility in the Christian Church, and call it char- 
ity. We give as the shower gives, which heralds its com- 
ing with the thunder, pours out in one flood its multitu- 
dinous drops, and, after its charity is bestowed, hangs out 
the banner in the sky to call attention to its generous con- 
tribution. God gives as the dew gives, which silently, al- 
most secretly, bathes the sleeping earth, and refreshes the 



THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ. 127 

thirsty flowers. We feel the freshness of the morning, 
and rejoice in the sparkle of its myriad diamonds, yet 
scarcely know whence the freshness and the beauty comes. 
I think our hearts ought to be touched even more by 
the delicacy with which God bestows his gifts than by 
the munificence of those gifts themselves. He delights to 
hide himself, and watch, as it were, from his concealment 
our bewildered surprise at each new benefaction from our 
unknown benefactor. I like to think that he takes a pe- 
culiar pleasure in our very ignorance of him. Great hand- 
fuls of golden grain fall in our path. We stoop to gather 
them, bless our good fortune, and never think of the great 
and good Father who ordered them to be dropped before 
us. The farmer gathers his autumnal fruits into his burst- 
ing barns, and praises the fruitful year. Does he think 
of the God who gathered from the ocean the clouds that 
dropped fatness on his meadow -lands? The merchant 
rubs his hands with glee over his successful venture, and 
congratulates himself on the wisdom that planned, and the 
energy that executed it. Does he remember the God 
whose trade- winds, softly blowing, brought his ships from 
afar, and rendered possible his achieved success ? The Ital- 
ian, with many a song, treads out beneath his sunny skies 
the ripened vintage. Does he know that the hot sands 
of the seemingly fruitless Sahara, blowing across the Med- 
iterranean waters, make his beloved Italy the land of the 
grape, or think who formed that furnace for Europe, and 
sent those winds laden with summer on their errand ? 
When I read in philosophy and in poetry the praises of 



I 2 8 OJ^^ TESTAMENT SHAD WS. 

nature's wisdom and nature's beauty, I think of Kuth and 
the young men. Oh ! fools and blind, not to know the 
Master whose servant nature is. 

Even in the highest gifts of his infinite love he hides 
himself By the shores of the Sea of Galilee stands the 
Son of God, surrounded by a throng whose eagerness for 
his words has led them far from home and shelter. He 
compassionates them, bids them sit down in companies 
upon the fresh grass — for it is early spring — then blesses 
and breaks the two small loaves and ^yq little fishes. But 
he gives to the disciples to distribute. They are the al- 
moners of his divine bounty. So still he distributes to 
perishing humanity the bread of life by the hands of his 
disciples. Father, mother, pastor, friend, from whose hands 
we have received the bread of life, these are but the young 
men who give the food their Master has provided. What 
thanks can ever comjDensate the kindly counsel of him 
who first pointed our burdened souls to that Cross at 
whose feet all burdens of sin and sorrow drop off and roll 
away ? Yet he is but the almoner of God's bounty, the 
Joseph who gives fr^om the granaries of the great King, 
the disciple who distributes the bread of life which Christ 
hath broken, one of the reapers whom God employs to 
drop in our path that divine food which is unto life eternal. 

A little flower lay drooping on the ground under an 
August sun. For days there had been no rain. The 
earth was parched, and dry, and hard. The little flower 
had held up its open mouth for rain, but no rain had 
come. And now it was dying of thirst. 



THE BENEVOLENCE OF BOAZ. 129 

As thus it lay fainting, dying, a shadow passed over the 
sun. The air became darkened. Heavy thunder muttered 
its threatenings in the horizon. Lurid flashes of lightning 
chased each other across the sky. The sultry air became 
sultrier. The birds hushed their singing. The very leaves 
of the neighboring trees stood still for fear. At last two 
big drops fell at the root of the little flo\ver. It was as if 
nature wept at its dying bed. A moment, and then the 
air was full of the descending rain-drops. They came as 
good Samaritans. They lifted up the dying flower, washed 
it, fed it, restored it to life. And when the sun broke 
through the retreating clouds again, two great tears glis- 
tened on the flower's little cheek — tears of gratitude and 
thankfulness. 

Then the flower lifted up its voice and said, " Thank 
you, blessed rain-drops — good rain-drops — you have saved 
my life." 

But the rain-drops answered, " Thank not us : thank the 
clouds ; they sent us." 

Then the flower lifted up its voice and said, " Thank 
you, blessed clouds — good clouds — you have saved my 
life." 

But the clouds answered, " Thank not us : thank the sun, 
which saw you dying, and summoned us from the ocean; 
and the winds, which heard your plaintive sighing, and 
brought us hither for your relief" 

Then the little flower turned to the wind, which bent 
down to earth and stopped for a moment to hear its words ; 
and to the sun, which sent down its beams to receive the 

1 



130 



OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 



flower's message. " Thank you, blessed wind — good wind," 
said the little flower. " Thank you, blessed sun — good sun 
— you have saved my life." 

" Thank not us," said the sun and the wind ; " thank the 
good God. He saw you dying, he heard your sighing, he 
took pity on you. We, sun, and winds, and clouds, and 
falling rain-drops, are only the almoners of his bounty." 

Then the flower, Christianly instructed, breathed forth a 
prayer of thanks to the great God. And the prayer went 
up, wafted on the wings of the wind, an odor of fragrance 
to the throne of the great, the only Giver. 




THE FORLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. 131 



X. 

THE FOELORN HOPE OF ISEAEL. 

TT is the theory of a certain school of medicine that it 
is the very nature of disease to provoke in the system 
a reaction which is itself the best cure, and that the only, 
or, at least, the chief office of medicine is to promote, if not 
to provoke, this reaction of nature against its foe. What- 
ever may be thought of this as a theory in therapeutics, it 
seems to hold good in the moral world. Out of corrup- 
tion and death, and bred of it, issues a new life, as from 
the decay of the seed springs the new grain. Aaron Burr 
did more to render dueling odious than all the sermons 
which the pulpit ever produced. If slavery had not grown 
so arrogant, abolition never would have become popular. 
The absolute universality of drunkenness produced, by a 
necessary reaction, the pledge, which is almost unknown in 
countries where drinking is more common, but drunkenness 
more rare. To the shameful corruptions of an age which 
produced a Loyola and a Tetzel, the Church is indebted 
for Luther and Melancthon. If Catholicism had been less 
corrupt. Protestantism would never have attained its power. 
The insatiate avarice of the French nobility enkindled the 
French Eevolution. The very fury of that revolution re- 
acted in producing a new and firm, though still despotic 



1^2 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

government. If it had not been for Charles I., England 
would never have had a Cromwell and a Hampden. To 
the licentious Cavalier the world is indebted for the virtu- 
ous but too rigid Puritan. The power of primitive Chris- 
tianity is partly owing to the strong reaction of the popu- 
lar mind, at least of the more virtuous portion, against the 
degrading superstitions of the pagan idolatry. Paul would 
scarcely have been possible had there been no Gamaliel. 

It was in an era of great national degradation and dis- 
tress that the character of Gideon, Israel's great deliverer, 
was formed. The nation seemed, indeed, to be upon the 
very eve of utter extinction. There had never been an 
hour in the national history when they were wholly free 
from the incursions of the Bedouin Arabs, whose lawless 
descendants still roam the desert lands east of Palestine. 
But with loss of faith in God came loss of manly courage 
founded on it. The Israelite offered but feeble resistance 
to these increasing forays. At length Arabians, Amale- 
kites, and Midianites made common cause against those 
whom they regarded as a common prey, if not as a com- 
mon foe. Emboldened by success, they crossed the valley 
of the Jordan, and planted their encampments along the 
hill-sides of Manasseh and Ephraim. They waited each 
year till the fattening herds and ripening grain invited 
their incursions. Then, unresisted and unavenged, they 
swept through the whole land, from the Sea of Galilee to 
the gates of Gaza, like a host of locusts or a fierce consum- 
ing fire. They " left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, 
nor ox, nor ass." No less cruel than greedy, they were as 



THE FORLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. 133 

ready to seize a stalwart young man for a slave, or a fair 
young maiden for a concubine, as the cattle or the stand- 
ing grain for booty. The frightened Israelites, not daring 
to resist, indeed quite unable in their own strength to do 
so, fled to the mountain fastnesses. From the dens and 
caves, which later served the brigands of the Holy Land 
a refuge from the legions of the Caesars, they witnessed in 
despair the despoiling of their homes. For seven years 
this operation had been repeated, till the land was far 
worse than famine- stricken. To the desperate people no 
choice seemed left but death from starvation in the moun- 
tains, or death from the Bedouin swords upon the plains. 
And still the warnings of Moses and Joshua were never 
brought to mind ; still the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth 
supplanted that of Jehovah. 

Such is the condition of the chosen people of God at the 
time when history introduces us to Gideon. His father's 
fields and herds have suffered in the universal devastation. 
In some hopeless attempt at defense, or more hopeless at- 
tempt at reprisal, his brethren have been captured, and in 
cold blood put to death for daring to defend their firesides 
from the invader. In solitude, this youngest son, left to be 
the only stay of his father's old age, is beating out by hand 
a little wheat saved from the remorseless Arab hordes. 
He has constructed a rude threshing-floor in one of those 
primitive wine- vats which Nature had provided in the cav- 
ernous hills of Palestine — an aperture in the limestone, 
half chasm, half cave — where, in Canaan's happier days, he 
had often pressed the grape w^th dancing feet and merry 



134 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

song. In like hiding-places, among the wadies of the wood- 
ed hills, the modern poverty-stricken peasant still conceals 
his grain from the lawless freebooters of the desert. Youn- 
gest of his father's family, Gideon has, nevertheless, a boy 
grown well on toward man's estate. With the pretense of 
humility, but in language which sounds like that of ill-con- 
cealed pride, he designates his family as poor in Manasseh, 
himself as least in his father's house. His father, neverthe- 
less, would appear to be a man of some means as well as 
influence. He has erected, at his own expense, an altar to 
Baal, and put by the side of it one of those rude images 
of Ashtaroth, carved in wood, which witnesses at once to 
the degradation of Israel's worship and the licentiousness 
of Israel's manners. Grideon himself owns a retinue of 
slaves, and has already attained no little honor in his tribe, 
if, indeed, his past exploits have not made him known for 
a mighty man of valor throughout the nation. He is a 
man of courage, yet of caution ; has not, in his despair, 
wholly lost all faith in God, yet gives himself up to bitter 
thoughts as he recalls the tales he loved to hear in his 
early youth of Israel's achievements, when Joshua led them, 
invincible, against these same barbarian hordes at whose 
feet they now are crouching. As he swings the flail in 
his rude threshing-floor, and wishes that he might thus 
beat the oppressors of his nation with an avenging arm, 
he mutters to himself, I fancy, almost the very words of 
later skepticism, " Where is the promise of his coming ?" 
So employed, the very solitude of his labor breeding these 
bitter reflections, he is startled by a salutation close beside 



THE FOUL ORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. 1 3 5 

him, " The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor." 
His answer is the utterance, in caustic irony, of his previ- 
ous meditations, " If the Lord be with us, why then is all 
this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which 
our fathers told us of ? * "^ * The Lord hath forsaken us, 
and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites." " Go 
in this thy might," replies the mysterious stranger, " and 
thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites." 
But the appeal enkindles no enthusiasm in Gideon. Like 
his prototype Moses, he begs to be excused. At length 
some faint idea that it is no ordinary man he talks with 
seems to dawn upon him. Perhaps he remembers the story 
of Abraham's heavenly visitors. He hastens away to fetch 
a kid and some unleavened cakes for his guest. He sets 
them out upon the rocky table — a primitive repast. But 
no sooner has he done so, than the Unknown touches them 
with his staff; the rock becomes an altar, fire leaps forth 
from it, and, while Gideon is transfixed to find his proffered 
food converted into a burnt-offering to the Lord, the angel 
departs as silently and mysteriously as he arrived. Gid- 
eon is left alone to accept this commission, so strangely 
conferred upon him, or to reject it as he will. 

One thing is clear to him, that, though Israel has quite 
forgotten the Lord, the Lord has not forgotten Israel. An- 
other, as he thinks more of it, is quite as clear, that, to have 
the help of the Lord in any future plans, the first step is 
a personal repentance of the sin of idolatry, and a personal 
recognition of the God whose right arm hath gotten them 
in the past their victories. This thought comes to him at 



136 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

night as he lies upon his bed, sleepless for thinking over 
the events of the day. With it comes an impulse to rise 
straightway and destroy the altar to Baal and the image 
of Ashtaroth which curse his father's grounds. He at- 
tributes this impulse to the God with whose angel mes- 
senger he has talked face to face. We may at least ques- 
tion whether our philosophy would not be wiser if it at- 
tributed to the same heavenly Counselor those similar 
surprises which come sometimes to us in our better moods 
as revelations from an unseen world. This voice of God 
he will obey — obey at once. So, without delay, he rises, 
summons ten of his most trusty servants, and, while the 
not distant city of Ophrah is still wrapped in sleep, casts 
down the heathen altar, cuts down the heathen idol — not 
the grove, as our English version improperly renders it — 
erects on this very spot a rude altar to the God of his 
fathers, and mingles w^ith the light of early dawn the fires 
of his first true sacrifice. From this time forth his posi- 
tion is publicly taken, the position of the leader whom he 
so much admires : "As for me and my house, we will serve 
the Lord." In the name of the almost forgotten Jehovah 
he conducts henceforth his entire campaign. 

The people, awaking to find their altar cast down and 
their goddess ruthlessly destroyed, demand, with angry im- 
jDrecations, the death of the impious iconoclast. The be- 
reaved father ingeniously interposes to save his sole sur- 
viving son. " Will ye plead for Baal V he cries. " If he be 
a god, let him plead for himself" The argument is effica- 
cious. It is the same as that which smote with such ter- 



THE FORLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. I37 

rific force upon tte Philistines in Ashdod, when, a century 
later, Dagon fell j)rostrate in his temple before the cap- 
tured ark of God ; the same which, during the reign of the 
Koman emperor Theodosius, converted the silent awe with 
which the heathen at first witnessed the destruction of 
their god at Alexandria into boisterous ridicule, when they 
perceived that he was unable to defend himself, and in- 
cited them to join with their Christian antagonists in im- 
molating Serapis in his own temple. It is, in fact, an argu- 
ment of universal application. Society may rightfully de- 
fend itself from threatened wrong, perhaps avenge wrongs 
committed ; but it is neither the business of the state to 
maintain true religion nor to punish the false. God needs 
no defenders. He can plead for himself 

The wild fury of the people at Gideon's audacity reacts 
in an equally wild enthusiasm, enkindled by his courage. 
From demanding his head, they pass, by one of those tran- 
sitions of popular feeling which are as inexplicable as they 
are common, to clamorously crowning him as their leader. 
His own clan of Abiezer gathers about him. His tribe of 
Manasseh answers to his trumpet-call. Heralds go out to 
the neighboring territories of Asher, Zebulon, and Naph- 
thali. The time is really auspicious, though it seems to be 
the reverse. The very despair of the people nerves them 
with courage. From their hiding-places in the hills the 
volunteers flock to Gideon's camp. There gathers about 
him an army of thirty-two thousand men. The Midian- 
ites, too, hear this note of war. They concentrate their 
forces to prepare for the conflict. One hundred and twen- 



138 <^LD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

ty thousand strong, they encamp on the hills that overlook 
the plains of Esdraelon. So the elements gather for the 
storm. 

Judged by ordinary military standards, Gideon's forces 
are quite inadequate for his purpose. His men are ill 
equipped, untrained, unused to war. They are to cope 
with a force four times as large, of Bedouins trained to war 
from childhood. No wonder that Grideon's faith falters. 
The already half-forgotten traditions are inadequate for 
such a crisis. He asks for some assurance of God's help. 
It is vouchsafed. He leaves a fleece of wool upon the 
ground. The dews saturate it though the earth is dry. 
This might be a chance. He begs leave to reverse the ex- 
periment. It is granted. Upon the following night the 
fleece alone is dry, the earth is wet with a heavy dew. It 
is a queer conceit that sees in this incident a symbolic in- 
terpretation of Gideon himself, " cool in the heat of all 
around, dry when all around were damped with fear." 
The history indicates nothing more than a purely artificial 
test of Gideon's own designing. 

He has tried God. Now God will try him. The thir- 
ty-two thousand men who have gathered at his call are 
too few for Gideon. They are too many for God. The 
laws of Moses not only provided Israel with no standing 
army ; they prescribed explicitly that the army should be 
composed of volunteers. On the eve of every campaign 
the officers were required to issue this proclamation to the 
people : " What man is there that is fearful and faint- 
hearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his 



THE FORLOBN HOPE OF ISRAEL. I39 

brethren's heart faint as well as his heart." Gideon is re- 
minded of this law. He issues the required proclamation. 
The Israelites are encamped on the slope of Mount Gilboa. 
The valley of Jezreel lies between them and the heathen 
host. The sight of their foe in battle array is sufficient to 
dampen the military ardor of many of Gideon's raw re- 
cruits. A third of his little army avail themselves of his 
permission to retire. Still too many remain. Near their 
camp, a spring, welling up, sends forth a copious stream to 
add to the fertility of the adjoining plain. Ever since the 
hour of this encampment, it has been known as the Spring 
of Trembling. The soldiers are brought by divine com- 
mand to this spring to drink. Some kneel down at the 
water's edge and drink from the running brook. Some 
dip up the water in their hand. The latter God selects 
for the campaign. There are but three hundred of them. 
The rest return to their tents to await the result. 

That night, as darkness gathers over the camps of Israel 
and of Midian, and both hosts are wrapped in slumber, 
Gideon, accompanied only by his armor-bearer, creeps across 
the valley to the very edge of the heathen tents to recon- 
noitre. God has promised that he shall hear what will 
strengthen his courage. Stealthily he enters the heathen 
lines. He comes to one wakeful group. An Arab is tell- 
ing to his fellows a dream. He has seen in his sleep a 
cake of barley tumble into the camp, roll down the hill- 
side, and, smiting a tent — Josephus says the royal tent — 
bring it to the ground. In that age every dream was ac- 
counted a direct revelation from heaven. The interpreta- 



140 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

tion of this one was not difficult. Only the poorest of the 
poor eat the despised barley. But these remorseless Bed- 
ouins had left to the despoiled inhabitants of Palestine 
nothing else. Their descendants still scornfully call the 
inoffensive inhabitants whom they plunder "barley -eat- 
ers." The awe-stricken listener makes at once the applica- 
tion. " This is nothing else," he says, " save the sword of 
Gideon." Israel's leader accepts the omen. He beckons 
to his armor-bearer. The two creep away as stealthily as 
they came. Grideon is impatient now for the conflict to 
begin, the issue of which is thus supernaturally assured to 
him. 

He divides his little troop into three companies, the 
usual division of the Hebrew army. He gives to each a 
trumpet. He furnishes each with a peculiar torch, which 
burns with a dull, smouldering light, that blazes up in a 
sudden illumination when waved through the air. To con- 
ceal it more effectually, he orders the burning end to be 
covered with an earthen pot. This torch of Gideon is still 
carried as a dark lantern by the night-police of Cairo. 

These preparations occupy probably the succeeding day. 
By sunset all is ready to inaugurate this most extraordi- 
nary campaign. In the silence and darkness of the night 
these three curiously-equipped companies steal across the 
valley of Jezreel. They environ the unsuspecting camp. 
By eleven o'clock they have taken their respective posi- 
tions. Gideon gives the appointed signal. Almost at the 
same instant the earthen jars are broken and cast upon the 
ground ; the torches, waving through the air, illume the 



THE FORLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. 141 

hill-sides with a lurid light ; the three hundred trumpets 
sound simultaneously the charge ; the war-cry, " The sword 
of the Lord and of Gideon " echoes among the hills. The 
startled Midianites spring from their tents. The hetero- 
geneous host is thrown into inextricable confusion. A 
panic ensues, like that which pervaded the Koman army 
when Hannibal, imitating the stratagem of Gideon, drove 
in upon their sleeping camp, among the defiles of the Ap- 
ennines, the two thousand frightened oxen bearing lighted 
torches bound upon their horns. Trained to border war- 
fare, these Bedouins are utterly unprepared to resist the 
surprise of such an unexpected assault. There is no Fabi- 
us, wise to reassure and to restrain them. Composed of 
different tribes and clans, speaking different tongues, under 
different leaders, banded together by no common nation- 
ality, only by a desire of booty or a wild passion of re- 
venge, in the delirium of excitement they turn their swords 
upon each other. 

For a brief hour a strange battle rages. Israel witnesses 
the slaughter of her foes without sharing in it. Then the 
Arabs ilee through the darkness for the ford of Bethabara, 
their terrors intensified by their superstition, their dread 
of the unknown enemy the greater because he is undis- 
cerned. Their road lays through the land of Ephraim. 
Its men of war, answering the call of Gideon's heralds, 
gather at the ford. The chief Midianitish kings have al- 
ready passed over. Two of their subordinate sheiks are, 
however, captured. To such a foe, in such an hour of ex- 
citement, no mercy is shown. Their heads are brought as 



142 ^^^ TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

trophies to Gideon. He meanwhile, with his three hun- 
dred men, pursues the flying Arabs far into their own des- 
ert. Faint with two nights of watching and a long and 
rapid march, he yet rests not, till, surprising them again in 
their retreat, he has captured their chiefs, Zebah and Zal- 
munnah, and avenged the death of his own brethren by 
the execution of their murderers. So effectual is the rout, 
that, of one hundred and twenty thousand Bedouins, fifteen 
thousand alone survive. So thoroughly does Gideon fol- 
low it up, and such a lesson does he teach these untamable 
sons of the desert, that, for nearly half a century, Israel 
suffers no new incursion at their hands. 

"Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Is- 
rael, so that they lifted up their heads no more ; and the 
country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gid- 
eon." 

The story of Gideon is a symbol as well as a history. 
God conducts all his campaigns upon analogous principles. 
The emancipation of mankind is always wrought out by 
a forlorn hope. God is not on the side of the strong bat- 
talions. In moral conflicts, at least, numbers never count. 
Only the few have faith in God and courage in his cause ; 
and faith and courage alone gain the battle. Elijah faces 
alone the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. The 
schools of Hillel and Shammai are overturned by the un- 
learned Galilean fishermen. The religion of half of Eu- 
rope is revolutionized by the ore-digger's son. The little 
Mayflower, tossed on the tempestuous seas of the Atlantic, 



THE FORLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. I43 

suffices to bring across seed enougli to plant half a conti- 
nent with truth. A few men and women of the common- 
er classes gather for prayer and conference in Philip Em- 
bury's carpenter's shop. The aristocracy of New York 
disdain to associate with them. But the result of the pray- 
ers of these despised Methodists is the largest Protestant 
organization in America. Wilberforce in England, and 
William Lloyd Garrison in America, call for recruits to 
wage war against the combined interests, commercial, po- 
litical, and ecclesiastical, of slavery and the slave-trade. 
Their adherents at first hardly equal in number Gideon's 
band ; but they emancipate two continents. 

Who would not chose to have been one of God's three 
hundred ? But when he brings us to the Spring of Trem- 
bling, how rarely we covet the post of honor. How we 
shrink from the battle of the present, even while we honor 
the heroism that courted it in the past. Every era has its 
battle. God's trumpet calls to-day, as Gideon's did, for re- 
cruits. Enter the ranks. Get your commission and your 
equipments from God ; then demand the surrender of 
your enemies and his in the spirit with which Ethan Allen 
demanded that of Ticonderoga : " In the name of the Great 
Jehovah and the Continental Congress." 

Various attempts have been made to explain the prin- 
ciple upon which God selected Gideon's troop of three 
hundred. Josephus tells us that they were the cowards 
of the camp. Apparently he thinks thus to increase the 
wonder of the miracle. Stanley suggests directly the op- 
posite explanation. "The next step was to remove the 



144 ^LD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

rash. At tlie brink of the spring, those who rushed head- 
long do^v^n to quench their thirst, throwing themselves on 
the ground, or plunging themselves into the water, were 
rejected; those who took up the water in their hands, and 
lapjDed it with self-restraint, were chosen." The Bible, 
however, does not suggest any interpretation of the singu- 
lar test which God emjDloyed. He never acts without rea- 
son; but he very often refuses to give one. He chooses 
his own instruments for his work. He gives no account 
of the principle upon which he proceeds in their selection. 
The battle of life is not a guerrilla warfare. It is a di- 
vinely-ordered campaign. God selects his soldiers as he 
will. His tests of character are certainly widely different 
from our own, often quite incomprehensible to us. He 
makes sad havoc of our scholastic and theological measur- 
ings. A keen observer of life told me that he had watched 
for the future of twelve succeeding valedictorians of a cer- 
tain New England college. Of only two did he ever hear 
any thing thereafter. One of those was a sailor. Mr. 
Moody, the famous lay preacher of Chicago, applied for ad- 
mission to a New England Church when a young man, 
but was kept waiting for a year because he did not know 
enough of the doctrines. In less than a year after his ad- 
mission, he had commenced, in his adopted city, a work for 
Christ, whose far-reaching influence is not surpassed by 
any pastor in the place. The God who ^Dassed by the 
seven manly sons of Jesse, and chose for royal honors the 
ruddy-faced boy brought in haste from the sheepfold, puz= 
zles us as much as he did David's father by his singular 



THE FOBLORN HOPE OF ISRAEL. 145 

method of selection. He sets aside America's trained states- 
men, and commissions the rail-splitter to be her emancipa- 
tor. He leaves Erasmus in his scholarship, and calls the 
singer-boy of Mansfield to liberate Europe. He selects not 
from the bishops, and deans, and canons of England's fa- 
vored Church, but from her corps of unhonored and imper- 
fectly-educated school ushers, the Spurgeon w^hose voice 
reaches most effectually the masses. What was once said 
by a famous divine of a celebrated revival preacher, may 
be said of nearly all the men whom God honors: "I do 
not doubt that God blesses his work, but I can not see 
why." He educates men, but his schooling is as singular 
as his selection. The most effectual temperance orator of 
England or America was picked from the gutter. The 
great reformer of the Church was educated a monk. The 
emancipator of America was born in a slave state. Paul 
sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Moses was brought up in 
Egypt. 

There is but one principle of choice apparent in these 
cases, namely, that " God hath chosen the foolish things of 
the world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the 
weak things of the world to confound the things which are 
mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which 
are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are 
not, to bring to nought things that are." Of this principle 
history contains many sublime illustrations ; none so sub- 
lime as that which the Master himself affords. Does your 
cause seem feeble, your comrades few, your arms inade- 
quate, the foe invincible, the campaign hopeless of success ? 

K 



146 



OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 



Consider him whose life so sublimely illustrates his own 
aphorism : The last shall be first, and the first last. The 
Crucified is become Conqueror. The very instrument of 
his death is become the symbol of religion. He that w^as 
without form or comeliness has reclothed a mourning 
world in beauty. The despised cake of barley has over- 
turned the tents of Midian. The world itself is redeemed 
by the forlorn hope of Israel. 




THE PBIGE OF AMBITION, 149 



XL 

THE PRICE OF AMBITIOK 

T3 E ADERS of tlie Bible are apt to transfer the charac- 
teristics of the book and its sacred penmen to the 
people whose history it describes. They read in the Pen- 
tateuch the admirable code of laws which Moses, under the 
inspiration of God, framed for the government of Israel, 
and they are apt to take it for granted that those laws in- 
terpret the life and character of the people. The truth is, 
however, that the history of a nation is rarely, if ever, re- 
flected in its legislation. It certainly was not in the case 
of Israel. The laws were divine. The history is intensely 
human. The laws were founded upon principles which 
humanity does not yet fully comprehend. The nation was 
in its infancy, a nation of just emancipated slaves, whose 
character is reproduced in the wild and lawless tribes 
which still inhabit the same country. 

So long as Israel remained in the wilderness, the laws 
which God had given them were probably maintained in 
force with a good degree of perfection. The tabernacle 
traveled with them. The statutes could be read to the 
assembled people in frequent convocations. The pi'iests 
and Levites were ready always to guard against infrac- 
tions of a system upon the preservation of which their au- 



X50 ^^^ TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

thority, their very existence as an order, depended. Tlie 
people, gathered in a single camp, were easily governed, 
felt the influence of Moses's master-mind, and suffered but 
little temptation to adopt the rites, the laws, or the cus- 
toms of heathen nations, with whom, indeed, they had lit- 
tle or nothing to do. During the first years of their occu- 
pation of the land of Canaan they were kept together by 
a common danger. Engaged in war, still possessing the 
character of a military encampment, still acting as one peo- 
ple under the guidance of Joshua, as they had before acted 
under the guidance of Moses, they doubtless preserved, 
measurably unimpaired, that religious and political system 
on which their national safety depended. 

But if peace hath her victories no less than war, it is 
also true that she has her dangers. These Israel did not 
escape. The conquest was completed. The land was di- 
vided among the various tribes. The people settled down 
to cultivate the country wliich they had conquered. The 
leaders, whose personal influence had preserved the na- 
tional unity, died. The law was no longer read to the 
people in yearly convocation. There were no copies of it 
scattered among the people, and no ability in them to read 
it if it had been. There were no local churches ; nothing 
analogous to the synagogues which later, in every town 
and village, kept alive a remembrance of God's word. The 
Holy City was not yet founded. There was no central 
temple whither the people resorted. The nation no longer 
preserved its unity. The tribes, when not engaged in bat- 
tling with surrounding nations, were engaged in quarrels 



THE PRICE OF AMBITION. 151 

among themselves. Infractions of the law were left un- 
punished. The law itself lapsed almost into oblivion. The 
Church lost its power. The priests and Levites themselves 
became corrupted by the forms of idolatry which almost 
universally prevailed. Alliances were formed with hea- 
then nations ; and such alliances brought into the Hebrew 
Church the heathen deities. As Kome subjugated Greece, 
but accepted her religion, and so intertwined it with her 
own that it is now quite impossible to separate Grecian 
and Eoman mythology ; as the Goths and Vandals in turn 
conquered Rome, but were themselves conquered by her 
half Christian, half heathen faith, so Israel conquered Ca- 
naan, but, as soon as the victory was complete, yielded her 
faith to that of the people she subdued. The consequence 
was a mongrel religion, in which the rites of heathenism 
and the w^orship of Jehovah were mingled in a most curi- 
ous manner, and a lawless state of society in which " every 
man did that which was right in his own eyes." Thus, 
from the death of Joshua to the birth of Samuel, a space 
of about three hundred years, the people of Israel lived in 
a state of anarchy as much worse than that which charac- 
terized the first ten years of California's settlement as the 
era 1400 B.C. was more barbaric than that of 1800 A.D. 
This change in the condition of the Jewish nation is very 
simply indicated in the Bible in a single sentence : " The 
people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the 
days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all 
the great works of the Lord that he did for Israel ; -^ ^ ^ 
and there arose another generation after them which knew 



152 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

not the Lord, nor yet the works whicli lie had done for Is- 
rael. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of 
the Lord, and served Baalim." 

The book of Judges describes in considerable detail this 
period of Jewish history. It affords a striking illustration 
of the truth, which statesmen and legislators are apt to for- 
get, that the prosperity of a nation depends far less upon 
the nature of its laws than upon the condition and char- 
acter of its people; that legislation is altogether secondary 
to education. Of the various graphic stories which it tells 
illustrative of the nature of this wild age, one of the most 
striking is that of Jephthah. 

The tribe of Gad preserved, through all the changes of 
its Egyptian servitude and its pilgrimage in the wilder- 
ness, the characteristics which belonged to the patriarchs. 
It was a tribe of nomadic herdsmen, wild, warlike, rejoic- 
ing, as the Bedouin Arabs still do, in the freedom of the 
wilderness. They had selected for themselves a habitation 
in the district beyond the Jordan, a wild, weird region, 
which even now only the more daring and adventurous of 
Oriental tourists visit. In the hisrhest state of civilization 
which Israel ever reached, the hills of Grilead were peopled 
by a ^vild and warlike race, who still continued, under the 
kings as under the judges, to do every man that which 
was right in his own eyes. There the sons of Saul main- 
tained a shadow of their father's authority long after Judah 
had accepted David as their king. There, among the sons 
of Gad, David in turn selected some of his best captains, 
" men of might and men of war, fit for the battle, that 



THE PRICE OF AMBITION. ^53 

could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like the 
faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the 
mountains." There, too, he found a retreat from his son 
Absalom. An exile from Judah, he was received with 
characteristic hospitality by this turbulent but chivalric 
people, who " brought beds, and basins, and earthen ves- 
sels, and wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, 
and beans, and lentiles, and parched pulse, and honey, and 
butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David and for 
the people that were with him, to eat." There he gathered 
up his army again ; and, going forth from this wilderness, 
his captains fought the battle which ended in the death 
of his son Absalom, and the re-establishment of his au- 
thority. 

Of this tribe Jephthah was a member. He was an ille- 
gitimate son. His brethren would have nothing to do 
with him, and drove him from the inheritance. He fled to 
the outskirts of the land, where Canaan bordered on the 
heathen wilderness. There he gathered about him a troop 
of wild and lawless men like himself, and became their ac- 
knowledged chieftain, leading the life of a freebooter, and 
often, doubtless, making just such incursions into the fields 
of Gilead as the Scottish clans used to make into the 
lowlands in the early history of Great Britain. Such a 
man soon acquires a certain sort of reputation, and Jeph- 
thah was known through all the trans-Jordanic region for 
a man of valor in an age when valor covered a multitude 
of sins. If the more peaceful inhabitants dreaded his fo- 
rays, they doubtless told with pride the stories of his en- 



154 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

gagements with their nearest neighbors and worst foes, the 
Ammonites ; for we may safely assume that, with the im- 
partiality of brigandage, Jephthah was at least quite as 
ready to forage on their flocks as on those of his native 
tribe. 

Thus it happened that, when war, always smouldering 
between the Hebrews and the heathen, broke out into an 
open flame between the tribe of Gad and the children of 
Ammon, the people instinctively looked to this Jephthah 
to become their leader, and a delegation of their sheiks 
went in person into the land of Tob to invite him to be- 
come their captain. 

A man of the highest patriotic impulse would have led 
his wild companions straightway against the common foe. 
With Jephthah, personal self-seeking mingles with better 
motives. The opportunity to bargain for place is too good 
to be passed over. So he makes as though he were re- 
luctant to accept the leadership, and demands, as his com- 
pensation, that, if he succeeds, he shall be made tke chief- 
tain of Israel. The terms are accepted. He is appointed. 
He sends an embassy to the Ammonites; demands the 
cause of their invasion ; exhausts diplomacy before he re- 
sorts to arms; applies to his neighbors across the Jordan 
for an alliance ; can get no aid from them, and makes ready 
for independent action. For meanwhile the Ammonites 
have penetrated into the heart of Gilead. There is no time 
for delay. Jephthah's tribe must flght single-handed the 
children of Ammon. 

This is quite a different matter from any of the maraud- 



THE PRICE OF AMBITIOK I55 

ing expeditions which have hitherto constituted his sole 
military experience. The responsibility presses heavily on 
him. He is w^ithout advisers. He takes counsel of his 
superstitious fancies. He solemnly vows to offer as a burnt- 
offering to the Lord whatsoever comes forth to meet him 
from his house if he return in triumph. This is the price 
he is willing to pay for victory. He hardly stops, per- 
haps, to consider the full meaning of his promise. His 
campaign is a short but brilliant one. In a single battle 
the Ammonites are so utterly routed that they retreat 
without attempting to make a second stand. Twenty cities 
fall into his hands as the result of that decisive battle. 
The land of Gilead is effectually redeemed. Jephthah re- 
turns in triumph to the city of Mizpeh, which apparently 
serves as a sort of capital for the trans- Jordanic tribes. 

Among those whose hearts beat high with exultation at 
this national deliverance there is none more joyous than 
Jephthah's daughter. She prepares to do her father hon- 
or; breaks over that maidenly reserve which forbids the 
Jewish maiden even to walk abroad unveiled and unat- 
tended, and, in the exuberance of her exultation, comes 
forth with timbrels and dances to meet him. So it is that 
the first one upon whom his eyes fall as he approaches his 
house in the city of Mizpeh is she who is the light of his 
home and the hope of his future. The sun that makes 
that hour bright is instantly beclouded. The joy of his 
victory gives place to the anguish of a riven heart. To 
the glad coDgratulations of his daughter, proud of her fa- 
ther's achievements and glad in her country's redemption. 



156 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

lie cries out, "Alas! my daughter, thou hast brought me 
very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me ; for I 
have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I can not go 
back." 

Over the dark scene which ensued Scripture drops a 
veil which we will not essay to draw aside. Of the bitter 
conflict between Jephthah's superstitious conscience and his 
heart's love ; of the outcry of his distracted soul in the first 
strange revulsion of that hour; of the daughter's calm sub- 
mission to the decree of death ; of her solemn preparation 
in solitude among the mountains of Gilead ; of the nation- 
al grief in what is rightfully accounted a national afflic- 
tion ; and of the honor which a nation and an age that ac- 
counted woman of little worth paid for years thereafter to 
the memory of the self-consecrated maiden — of this we have 
but a faint suggestion in the brief and enigmatical narra- 
tive of Scripture : "And she said unto her father, ^ Let this 
thing be done for me : let me alone two months, that I 
may go up and down upon the mountains and bewail my 
virginity, I and my fellows.' And he said, ^ Go.' And he 
sent her away for two months ; and she went with her 
companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the moun- 
tains. And it came to pass, at the end of two months, that 
she returned unto her father, who did with her according 
to his vow which he had vowed ; and she knew no man. 
And it was a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel 
went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gil- 
eadite, four days in a year." 

We call this narrative enigmatical ; for what is the true 



THE PRICE OF AMBITIOK 157 

interpretation of it is a question which has long divided 
Biblical critics, and which will probably never be satisfac- 
torily settled. On the one hand, it is said that the lan- 
guage of the original text is ambiguous ; that it is capable 
of a translation such as will only indicate that Jephthah 
consecrated whatever he should first meet to the Lord, but 
not necessarily as a burnt-offering ; that the probability of 
his meeting a human being must have been in his mind 
when he uttered this vow, and that it is incredible that he 
should have promised to offer such'an offering upon God's 
altar ; that, even if he had made such a vow, the high-priest 
would have assuredly interfered to prevent the consumma- 
tion of a sacrifice in direct violation of the religion of Is- 
rael ; that the people themselves, who were so horrified at 
a similar sacrifice when offered by the King of Moab, and 
interfered to prevent Saul from putting to death his own 
son under circumstances which offered greater palliation, 
would never have suffered Jephthah to fulfill his cruel pur- 
pose ; that the law made special provision for the redemp- 
tion by money of any subject consecrated to sacrifice — a 
law of which Jephthah would have been sure to avail him- 
self; that, if the execution had really taken place, the Bible 
would have described it in language more explicit, would 
have condemned it in language not unambiguous, and 
would certainly not have included Jephthah among the 
heroes whose faith is commended, as it is in the eleventh 
chapter of Hebrews, for our imitation ; and that, finally, 
the direct declaration of the history that her companions 
" bewailed her virginity," and that " she knew' no man," in- 



158 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

dicate a consecration to a life of seclusion as a virgin — a 
self-sacrifice far more significant among the Hebrews, in 
that age, than it is in Christendom at the present day. 
These considerations are very strongly seconded by those 
commendable sympathies which make us naturally reluct- 
ant to conceive it possible that any thing so unnatural and 
horrible as the literal sacrifice of a daughter by her father 
could take place, under the impulse of mistaken religious 
motives, especially in the supposed service of the true Grod, 
and at the hands of one who honestly sought to serve and 
please him. 

On the other hand, it is said that the plain language of 
the narrative is that Jephthah vowed to consecrate as a 
burnt-offering whatever came forth to meet him ; that so 
the narrative was read by all Hebrew scholars, Jewish and 
Christian, until as late as the twelfth century; that to 
change the translation to meet preconceived views is al- 
ways a false philology and a dangerous exegesis; that 
vows of celibacy were absolutely unknown and unheard 
of, not only among the Hebrews, but among surrounding 
nations; that to attribute such a vow to Jephthah is to 
impute to an era fourteen centuries before Christ the re- 
ligious ideas and customs of the mediaeval ages of Chris- 
tianity ; that, on the other hand, human sacrifices were of 
very common occurrence in the Orient among all people 
except the Hebrews ; that Abraham himself supposed at 
one time that he was called upon by Grod to offer up a 
similar sacrifice; that it is not strange that the more hu- 
mane principles of the Mosaic religion and legislation were 



THE PRICE OF AMBITION. 159 

not yet fully comprehended by the semi-barbarous Gile- 
aditeSj or by Jephthah, whose life had been spent probably 
as much among the heathen as among the people of God ; 
that it was not a more marked violation of the law than 
was the act of Gideon in setting up an unauthorized, if not 
an idolatrous worship in Ophrah ; that at the time of this 
occurrence there was as yet no order of prophets estab- 
lished to keep alive a popular remembrance of the law and 
obedience to its precepts ; that the Levites themselves were 
as much corrupted by idolatrous associations as the people ; 
that the high -priest was in the adjoining but hostile tribe 
of Ephraim, unable alike to participate in the sacrifice, as 
he is represented by legendary art to have done, or to pro- 
test against it ; that the very vagueness of the ndfrrative 
indicates a horror so fearful that the pen recoiled from its 
narration ; that the principle of the sacred penmen is to 
narrate, not to approve or condemn, and that therefore it 
passes by in silence this fearful sacrifice, leaving the story 
itself to make its own impression — an impression which 
words of condemnation could only weaken ; that if the 
name of Jephthah is included among those the record of 
whose faith the apostle thinks worthy of our imitation, so 
also are the names of Rahab, who was a harlot, and of 
David, who was guilty of the double crime of murder and 
adultery, and that the whole teaching of that remarkable 
chapter is lost by those who fail to perceive that it i^faith^ 
not purity, the power of which the apostle alone seeks to 
illustrate — faith often mated to ignorance or marred by sin ; 
and that, finally, the Scripture, in saying of the daughter 



IQQ . OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

of Jephthah tliat " she knew no man," simply points out tlie 
fact, whida gives significance to the whole of this strange 
story, that Jephthah was left by his singular vow without 
issue, and that therefore the hope of founding a dynasty, 
which had lured him from his retreat in the land of Tob, 
was destroyed at the same moment that his own power 
and position was rendered secure by his victory. 

Whichever of these views is entertained, the fact re- 
mains that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to his political 
ambition. Whether he did so by a literal or an emblem- 
atic offering, it is neither important, nor, j)erhaps, possible 
to determine with certainty. The moral of his history is 
the same. Jephthah realized his dream. He judged Is- 
rael to the day of his death. But at what a cost ! It was 
better far to be an outlaw in the land of Tob with his 
daughter's companionship, than to be ruler in the land of 
Gilead with the gloom of her sacrifice shadowing his heart. 
Was there ever a time thereafter that, in the wretched lone- 
liness of his rude court at Mizpeh, he did. not look back 
with regret on his tent life in the wilderness ? 

We wonder that Jephthah should have made a vow so 
vague, the consequences of which might prove so terrible. 
But Jephthah's vow is not an unusual one. It is repeated, 
half consciously, yet with a terrible earnestness, by every 
man who, setting out in life, resolves to attain his victory 
— wealth, honor, power — cost what it may. This terrible 
history is re-enacted by every one who pays, as the price 
of his ambition, the light and joy of his true life. We 



THE PRICE OF AMBITION. 1(31 

shudder at the sacrifice of a daughter as though it were 
an event of rare occurrence. Is it indeed so? When I 
read of courtly marriages between princes and potentates, 
where crowns, not hearts, are joined, and, to extend or main- 
tain a kingdom, a noble nature, possessing wondrous capa- 
bilities of love, is sacrificed to political expediency, I think 
of Jephthah and his daughter. When I see society gath- 
ering to crown with mocking festivities the immolation of 
a fair maiden in a cruel, loveless marriage, the price of so- 
cial ambition, I think of Jephthah and his daughter. When 
I see the man of business so immersed in the toils of life 
that his children grow up neglected — for it is the children 
of the rich, not of the poor, that suffer most from neglect 
— provided by their father with all that money can pur- 
chase, and with nothing else, his daughters priestesses in 
the court of fashion, his sons sowing in idleness and dissi- 
pation the seeds of future debauchery and drunkenness, I 
think of Jephthah and his daughter. Only Jephthah sac- 
rificed to Jehovah under the impulse of a misguided con- 
science, we to Mammon under the dictation of sordid hopes. 
He sacrificed a daughter, we every thing that makes life 
worth living. The tradesman who sacrifices honesty to 
profits, the lawyer who sacrifices justice to victory, the pol- 
itician who sacrifices patriotism to place, the minister who 
sacrifices God's truth to pulpit popularity — what are they 
but modern Jephthahs, guilty of a greater folly and a 
greater sin. A noble ambition, rightly directed, is essen- 
tial to a true life — a truth we shall presently see illustrated 
by the story of Samson. But ambition crowned raon- 

L 



162 



OLD TESTA3IEXT SHADOWS. 



arcli becomes a most tjTannical and despoiling despot, that 
taxes heavily and gives little in return, a very Abimelech 
among kings, a veiy bramble of a monarch, out of which 
comes fire that devours the cedars of Lebanon. 

It is better to live an outlaw in the land of Tob than to 
sacrifice one's true life for any post, however alluring, in 
the land of Gilead. This, as we read it, is the moral of the 
story of Jephthah and his daughter. 





SAMSON AND DELILAH. 



SAMSOJS^S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 1^5 



XII. 
SAMSON'S STEENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 

TT^ROM the wild and rocky fastnesses of the trans-Jor- 
danic region^ history conducts us to the fertile plains 
which border the Mediterranean Sea. 

Of these plains, which constitute one of the great phys- 
ical features of the Holy Land, the richest and most fertile 
was that of Philistia. Its sea-port towns rendered it capa- 
ble of a maritime commerce in an age of the world when 
the Mediterranean bordered civilization, and was univers- 
ally known as the Great Sea. Its territory, lying midway 
between Egypt, mother of civilization, and Phoenicia, moth- 
er of language, rendered it a great highway. Its fertile 
soil, watered by the streams which flow from the adjoin- 
ing hills of Judea, was always fruitful, abounding with the 
wheat, the olive, and the grape, even in times when famine 
cursed adjoining lands. Its level plains afforded facilities 
for horses and chariots of war which the hill-country of 
Palestine did not possess, and thus contributed to render 
its people peculiarly warlike. Never really subdued by 
Joshua, the Philistines continued to maintain a desultory 
guerrilla w^arfare against the neighboring tribes, until final- 
ly subjugated in the long campaigns which David waged 
against them. At the time of which we write, however, 



155 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

they were really masters of nearly all tlie country west of 
the Jordan valley. They carried their incursions as far 
north as Jezreel, as far east as the Jordan. The Israelites, 
divided by petty jealousies, not infrequently engaged in 
civil war among themselves, proved no match for their 
powerful neighbors. Their resistance to these inroads be- 
came less and less vigorous, and finally altogether ceased. 
The tribes of Israel became tributaries to the land of Phi- 
listia. They lost all heart ; had no courage to respond to 
the call of Samson; with their own hands bound their 
would-be deliverer, and surrendered him to their oppress- 
ors. National degradation can go no farther. 

Such was the condition of the western tribes when Sam- 
son was born. He was of the tribe of Dan, of the town of 
Zorah. His birth, was heralded by an angelic messenger. 
In accordance with the divine command, he was conse- 
crated to the life of a Nazarite, from his cradle, by his 
mother's vows. He drank no wine; ate no grapes; suf 
fered the locks of his hair to grow uncut. From his youth 
he gave tokens of that extraordinary strength which has 
since rendered his name proverbial. His fame was not 
confined to his own nation. Under the title of Hercules 
he was deified both in Egypt and in Greece ; for that Her- 
cules is a heathen transformation of Samson there is little 
room to doubt. To the same symbolic origin both names 
are traced by linguists. Both are men of superhuman 
strength, of exuberant physical life, of wild, ungovernable 
passions, and of broad and trenchant humor. Of both sub- 
stantially the same traditions are told. Both slay a lion 



SAMSOJTS 8TBENQ TH AND WEAKNESS. 1(3 7 

witli their own hands. Both suffer death, though in dif- 
ferent ways, at the hands of their treacherous wives. One, 
a captive in Philistia, summoned to make sport for his en- 
emies, pulls down the temple of Dagon, and buries both 
the god and its worshipers in the ruins. The other, a cap- 
tive in Egypt, is led forth to be sacrificed to Jupiter, breaks 
the bands which bind him, and slays the priests and scat- 
ters the assemblage. Even the custom of tying a lighted 
torch between two foxes in the circus, in the memory of 
the damage once done to the harvest by a fox with burn- 
ing hay and straw tied to it, was long maintained in Greece, 
a singular witness to the extent of Samson's reputation. 

Yet, with all his power and prowess, Samson's life proves 
a most wretched failure. " He justifies no expectation, lives 
to no purpose, and goes out finally, as a snuffed candle, at 
the end of a most foolish and absurd life." 

We first meet him on his way to Timnath. A Philis- 
tine maiden has captured his fancy by her beauty. His 
parents remonstrate against the alliance. " Is there never 
a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among 
all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncir- 
cumcised Philistines V But neither the protests of his par- 
ents, nor the plain provisions of the law, nor the high and 
holy mission to which he is called by God, can counteract 
his passion. To Timnath he will go. 

The result justifies the father's remonstrance. The Phi- 
listine maiden plays the coquette with Samson. He pro- 
poses, as is the custom in the Orient, a riddle to his guests 
at the betrothal feast. He wagers with them thirty changes 



IQg OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

of raiment that they can not guess it. She cajoles him out 
of his secret, and discloses it. That they should have won 
the wager does not trouble him. He goes alone, across the 
country, and takes the thirty changes of raiment from the 
Philistine city of Ashkelon to pay his bet. But that he 
should have been cheated by a woman sorely wounds his 
pride; and when the Philistine coquette marries one of 
these very guests, Samson's groomsman, his indignation 
knows no bounds. This is the beginning of hostilities. 
Samson, to avenge himself of his enemy, catches three hun- 
dred jackals, ties them together two by two by the tails, 
puts a firebrand between the tails, and sets them loose in 
the harvest season to set fire to the Philistines' stand ino^ 
wheat. Then, when the Philistines, with a singular injus- 
tice, visit their wrath on the bride and the father, putting 
her to death, Samson, with that fickleness of feeling which 
characterizes him, smites them " hip and thigh with a great 
slaughter." 

We next find him in the hands of more formidable foes. 
The Philistines come up to avenge their wrongs on the na- 
tion which shelters him. The Israelites deliver him bound 
into their hands. He submits without opposition, only to 
break the cords that bind him, and leap upon his would-be 
captors with a shout that fills them with alarm. In the 
panic which ensues a thousand are slain — some, doubtless, 
by Samson's own hand, others perhaps trampled under foot 
by their own companions. 

Twenty years elapse, during which he is acknowledged 
as the leader of his own tribe, and perhaps also of the 



SAMSOW'S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 1^9 

neighboring tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Doubtless the 
authority of the Philistines is broken, their yoke somewhat 
lightened ; doubtless, too, his term of office is marked by 
constant raids and border warfare. It is not, however, 
characterized by any marvelous achievements on Samson's 
part, whom nothing seems capable of arousing but per- 
sonal wrongs or imminent danger. We next meet him, at 
all events, in Gaza, a Philistine city, whither he has gone 
in pursuit of a Philistine harlot, still yielding to the bane 
of his life, an unbridled, self-willed, self-indulgent spirit. 
The Philistines close the gates, and set a watch to catch 
him at the dawn. At midnight he goes out, takes the 
gates and their posts, and carries them off, in a sort of 
scornful disdain of their boasted strength, and so es- 
capes. 

One might have thought he would have learned enough 
by this time of Philistine women. But such a man, weak 
in the very self-conceit of his own strength, never learns. 
He falls in with another, sets his heart upon her, and, with 
a folly for which there is absolutely no palliation, walks 
with open eyes into the trap this treacherous Delilah sets 
for him. She undertakes to get from him the secret of his 
superhuman strength. Three times he mocks her with 
lying answers. Three times she binds him, and delivers 
him into the Philistines' hands. He breaks the green 
withes, the new ropes, the web woven in with his hair, and 
scatters the captors, who imagine that they have secured 
him. Three times he discovers the treachery of this wom- 
an ; and yet, because of her beauty, and yielding to her 



170 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

tears and entreaties, he deliberately tells her the whole 
secret of his strength, then lies down to sleep with his 
head upon her lap, to awaken, his locks shaven, his vow 
broken, his strength gone, and himself an easy prey to his 
reraorseless enemies. 

If his life had ended here there would have been noth- 
ing in it to entitle him to a place among the heroes of 
Hebrew history; nothing to explain the fact that the apos- 
tle names him among those who " through faith subdued 
kingdoms." But his servitude teaches him that lesson of 
self denial which nothing but affliction suf&ces to teach. 
He grinds away in the prison-house of his foes ; employs, 
in this horrid slavery, the remnant of that strength with 
which God had endowed him, and which, by her vows, his 
mother had consecrated to God's service. Little by little 
that strength returns to him. At last he is brought forth 
on one of the high days of the Philistines to grace a hea- 
then festival. Humbled, he looks to God for strength to 
fulfill his purpose, and redeems his name from the igno- 
miny which would otherwise attach to his wasted life by 
voluntarily sacrificing himself that he may win one more 
victory over the Philistines, and bury their god Dagon in 
its ovm temple. 

"And Samson said. Let me die with the Philistines. 
And he bowed himself with all his might ; and the house 
fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were 
therein ; so the dead which he slew at his death were more ' 
than they which he slew in his life. Then his brethren, 
and all the house of his father, came • down and brought 



SAMSOirS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 1 7 1 

liim up, and buried Mm between Zorah and Eshtaol, in the 
burying-place of Manoah Ms father." 

If you will consider it, this story of Samson is not more 
remarkable for its narration of his marvelous physical 
strength than for its display of his marvelous moral weak- 
ness — "his impotence of mind in body strong." In this 
age of much-praised muscular Christianity, it is worth our 
while to notice of how little use the muscular is without 
the Christianity ; to repeat to ourselves Samson's self ques- 
tioning in his captivity, as Milton portrays it : 

"What is strength without a double share 
Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burthensome. 
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall 
By weakest subtleties ; not made to rule, 
But to subserve where wisdom bears command." 

Samson's virtues and vices are those of one in whom the 
animal nature predominates. He is bold, fearless, auda- 
cious ; rushes into all sorts of hazards with the reckless- 
ness of an untamable self-reliance ; engages with the lion 
for the mere sport of rare wrestling ; goes alone across the 
country of the Philistines to forage in the city of Ashkelon 
for the means of paying Ms wager ; goes dow^n to the 
walled city of Gaza, when he well knows that all Philistia 
is on the watch for him ; puts himself into Delilah's hands 
over and over again when he has already discovered her 
treachery. With this rare strength and aimless courage 
goes the good humor which belongs to exuberant health 
and vigor. His very name, " The Sunny," indicates this 
quality, which manifests itself oftenest in his deeds, yet 
sometimes in his speech, as in his reply to the discoverers 



;[^2 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

of his secret : "If ye Lad not plowed with my heifer ye 
had not found out my riddle." "His most valiant, his 
most cruel actions are done with a smile on his face and a 
jest in his mouth." "He is full of the spirits and the 
pranks, no less than of the strength of a giant." His half 
humorous revenge on the Philistines for the treachery of 
the coquette who jilted him ; his assault on his foes with 
the ridiculous weapon, the jaw-bone of an ass ; his scornful 
song of triumph over them ; his huge jest on the inhabit- 
ants of Gaza in carrying off their gates ; his trick, thrice 
repeated, on Delilah — all characterize a man of buoyant 
temper and effervescing life, too full of animal spirits to 
take aught seriously, to feel in any measure the bitterness 
of his nation's servitude, or to give himself to its deliver- 
ance. 

So this very strength of his animal nature proves his 
weakness and works his ruin. Inspired by no high, no- 
ble, commanding purpose, his misdirected power spends it- 
self in fitful gusts of idle bravado ; he fails to fulfill the 
mission with which God has intrusted him, and, instead of 
setting his people free, suffers the chains to be welded on 
his own wrists. Endowed with superhuman strength, he 
is yet unable to control his own untamable passions. He 
is wholly wanting in the power of self restraint. So, like 
a rudderless ship, blown hither and thither by the impulses 
of the hour, the very strength of his own nature only 
makes his wreck and ruin the more terrible. Upon his 
monument might fittingly be inscribed, " Died, by his own 
hand, a victim of self indulgence." To the protest of his 



SAMSOIPS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 173 

parents against his marriage with a Philistine maiden, the 
answer is, to him, all-sufficient, " It is right in mine eyes." 
He inaugurates a campaign against the oppressors of his 
people, not in any well-considered purpose to deliver them, 
but in a mere half-humorous, half savage freak of personal 
revenge. He breaks the bonds with which Israel had 
bound him. A man of true moral courage would never 
have been bound ; would have awakened in the hearts of 
his people a courage like his own, and led them to a vic- 
tory which would not have been fruitless. It is true, he 
delivers himself from the town of Gaza by a marvelous 
feat of strength ; but the weakness which could suffer him, 
a judge in Israel, to pursue a Philistine harlot into the 
trap there set for him was yet more marvelous. He slays 
a thousand Philistine men of arms, but he is unable to re- 
sist the tears and blandishments of one Philistine woman ; 
breaks the new ropes as though they were threads of tow, 
but is curiously powerless to break the web she weaves 
about him. Ordained of God from his cradle to be a de- 
liverer of his people, the ambition to deliver them never 
seems to have actuated him. He lives an aimless, and 
therefore a barren life. He dies a fruitless, though a mar- 
tyr's death. His nation remains in the bondage from which 
he might have freed it, and his name survives him only to 
witness to the weakness of him whose powers, however 
great they may be, are subservient to his passions. Jeph- 
thah sacrificed his heart's affections to his ambition. We 
lament his folly while we honor his fidelity. Samson sac- 
rificed a high and holy ambition to the gratification of un- 



174 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

bridled lust. Nothing but the pathos of his death saves 
his name from deserved oblivion. 



In different forms the history of Samson is re-enacted on 
every side of us. It is not merely that young America is 
shorn of his strength, lying in the lap of indulgence. It is 
not merely that many a young giant, called of God to a 
noble mission, and gloriously endowed with all the power 
which talent, education, wealth, friends, position give, casts 
all recklessly away for the sake of an hour of self-gratifica- 
tion with the treacherous Delilah. It is not merely that 
his worst foes hide their \viles beneath the witchery and 
enticements of pleasui^e, which ancient mythology rightly 
pictured as a beautiful but treacherous woman. It is not 
merely that self-indulgence undermines the character, de- 
stroys the manhood, eats out the strength, and leaves the 
emasculated victim to fall, an easy prey to the most de- 
grading forms of servitude. All this, indeed, is true. No 
young man ever doubts the truth of this, or will deny the 
reality of the dangers which environ a life surrendered to 
illicit pleasure. But every young man expects to escape 
those dangers. Every Samson, when he enters Gaza, does 
so in full assurance that its walls can not imprison him. 
If he lies down in the lap of Delilah, it is in the confidence 
that he will arise as strong as ever. Did you ever know 
the young man who doubted his power to lay aside the 
cigar, drop the wine-cup, break off with corrupt compan- 
ions, step aside from the path of illicit pleasure at his will ? 
Does any man ever believe that he can be shorn of his 



SAMSOJ^'S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 175 

strengtli ? " Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit ? 
There is more hope of a fool than of him." 

But in the story of Samson's life is more than this. In 
its disclosure of his weakness it discloses the secret of all 
strength — a single purpose resolutely pursued. This can 
achieve any thing. First of all warriors, in ancient or mod- 
ern times, is the Little Corporal, whose diminutive stature 
is the subject, at the outset of his career, of much coarse 
satire. First of all orators, in past or present ages, is the 
Greek youth whose thick utterance seemed to forbid all 
hope of eloquence. But, on the other hand, he who lacks 
a noble purpose lacks the first condition of true power. 
All the culture which a college curriculum affords is thrown 
utterly away by a large proportion of its students for want 
of a centralizing, crystallizing aim. An army without a 
commander is a mere mob. A man without a purpose is 
not a man. He is a mere canaille of disorganized appe- 
tites and passions. His forces may be never so great; if 
there is no master-passion to martial and direct all the 
rest, there will be no heroic battle, no victory. The moral 
of that threadbare fable of the tortoise and the hare is not 
that assiduity is better than genius, but that a persistent 
purpose is always fleeter than a fitful one. Some one has 
epitomized the condition of a true life in the sentence, 
" Have something to do, then do it." This first condition 
is how often disregarded. How many an antitype has 
Samson, whose life comes to nothing, not for want of ca- 
pacity, nor yet for lack of opportunity, but for very aim- 
lessness. Power misapplied — of how many lives this sin- 



176 



OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 



gle sentence would be the all-sufficient history. How many 
a young man of noble nature, and almost divine endow- 
ment, called of God to live in an era when " to be living is 
sublime," yet casts his life utterly away, like early rotted 
fruit, for want of a sublime purpose, and a persistent pur- 
suit of it. How many lives, as sadly gone to ruin as that 
of Samson, attest the truth of the wise man's apothegm, 
" He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city 
that is broken down and without walls." 




ELI8HA'8 VISION. 177 



XIII. 

ELISHA'S YISIOK 

lyTEARLY three hundred years elapsed between the 
days of Samson and those of Elisha. Israel in the 
mean time underwent great changes. The republic was 
supplanted by the monarchy. Saul consolidated the tribes 
under one national government. David prepared the way, 
by his service of song, for the erection of the Temple and 
the establishment of its sublime ritualistic service. Solo- 
mon extended his domain beyond that of any predecessor. 
With peace and prosperity came luxury, sensuality, ener- 
vation. Both the vices and the virtues of his reign were 
significant of degradation. When immorality is rife, relig- 
ion becomes a mere system of ethics. It was so in the 
days of Solomon. The religious teachings of his age ceased 
to appeal to the higher religious sentiments — appealed 
only to the moral sense. Religious experience deteriorated 
from a spiritual apprehension of the unseen to a half-sen- 
sual, emotional fervor. The book of Proverbs and Solo- 
mon's Song followed the inculcations of Samuel and Na- 
than, and the Psalms of David. The book of Proverbs is 
a collection of moral maxims. It inculcates chiefly the 
common virtues — chastity, honesty, industry, truth. It 
draws its sanctions chiefly from the rewards and punish- 

M 



178 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS, 

ments of the present. It rarely refers to God or tlie fu- 
ture. Such a work is itself a sign of deteriorating morals, 
which its feeble protests are, however, quite powerless to 
correct. Solomon's Song is a book of religious experience. 
It is so steeped in the enervation of the age which begets 
it, that, to the present day. Biblical critics are not agreed 
whether it is a religious poem or an Oriental love-song. 
With the death of Solomon the glory of Judaism faded, 
never to revive. The kingdom was rent in twain. Ten 
tribes, occupying the northern portion of the common ter- 
ritory, took for their capital Shechem, the chief city of Sa- 
maria. The two tribes of Judah and Benjamin alone re- 
mained faithful to the dynasty of David. 

From this time the corruption of Israel increased with 
fearful rapidity. The laws of God were openly, and by 
public proclamation, annulled. Idols were put up in Beth- 
el and Dan, and the worship of the Egyptian calf was sub- 
stituted for that of Jehovah. Under Ahab the worship 
of Baal became the national religion, the priests of Baal 
the ministers of the national Church. The disciples of Je- 
hovah professed their religious faith at the hazard of life 
itself. The law of Moses providing for free speech became 
a dead letter. The prophets of God were not safe from 
the impious hands of the audacious king and his yet more 
audacious wife. Elijah fled from the court to the wilder- 
ness for safety. One hundred and fifty prophets took ref- 
uge in a cave from the persecutions of Jezebel. So thor- 
ough was the apparent extermination of God's people that 
Elijah supposed that he alone was left to worship the 



ELISHA'S VISION. I79 

true God. The courts of justice imbibed the spirit of the 
age. The judges, creatures of the king, did the royal bid- 
ding, and covered with the forms of law acts of the most 
flagrant injustice. 

This corruption proceeded at length to such a pass as 
to produce an inevitable reaction. If there had not been 
among the people a deep, strong, though unuttered sense 
of the nation s degradation, the priests of Baal never would 
have obeyed the summons of Elijah to the trial of their 
faith at Mount Carmel. The four hundred and fifty priests 
of the Phoenician god were slain by a popular uprising. 
The power of the court was broken. Jezebel was never 
able to restore it. Ahab was slain in battle. Ahaziah 
died, by an accident, after a short reign of two years. Je- 
horam, a younger brother, reigned in his stead. The queen, 
growing old, never acquired over him the influence she 
possessed over his father or his brother. The image of 
Baal was put away. The golden calves remained at Bethel 
and at Dan, and, although their worship constituted the 
religion of the state, apparently some measure of religious 
liberty was accorded to the people. Elisha was invited 
to the court which threatened his predecessor's life. He 
became one of the king's privy counselors. The campaign 
against the Moabites was conducted according to his ad- 
vice, and their incursion was repelled, and they routed and 
driven from the land with great slaughter. This enhanced 
his reputation. He lived in state at the capital. His fame 
extended beyond the bounds of his own nation. Mild, 
gentle, not lacking in quiet courage, yet shrinking from 



18Q OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

public conflicts, lie uttered no protest against the corrup- 
tion of his age, though he never shared it, and endeavored 
to neutralize its pernicious tendencies rather by the quiet 
influence of his own simple habits and the example of his 
own godly life than by denunciations of irreligion and vice. 
He was the Melancthon, as Elijah was the Luther of his 
age. 

Such was the condition of Israel at the time of which 
we write. Their land was overrun with marauding bands 
from Syria, as in the days of Gideon and Samson it had 
been overrun with similar companies from the land of 
Moab. The inhabitants had suffered not a little from these 
incursions. At length the King of Syria formed the design 
of taking captive the King of Israel himself. He prepared 
for this purpose, at different times, several ambuscades. 
But, however secretly his plans were formed, and however 
well and wisely executed, they came to naught. They 
were always discovered ; the ambuscade was always avoid- 
ed. The king was convinced that there was treachery in 
his camp. He held a council of war, and disclosed his 
suspicions to his chief officers. One of them undertook to 
defend himself and his companions from the imputation : 
" Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel," said he, " telleth the 
King of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bed- 
chamber." The surmise was not an unnatural one ; for it 
is to be remembered that Naaman, captain of the host of 
Syria, and a great man with his master, had tested in his 
own person the power of this prophet. It is no wonder, 
therefore, that Elisha's reputation in the heathen court was 



ELI8HA8 VISION, 181 

second only to that which he enjoyed in the court of Is- 
rael. The theory of this officer, perhaps Naaman himself, 
was the correct one. It was accepted by the king, who re- 
solved to capture the prophet, and so put an end to this 
disclosure of his plans. For this purpose he organized a 
much larger company than ordinary. He learned by spies 
that Elisha was at Dothan, a city whose ruins still remain 
to mark its site in the north of Samaria, not far from the 
plains of Esdraelon. He acted with such secrecy and such 
celerity that his designs were not suspected until the city 
was entirely surrounded, and escape seemed to be impos- 
sible. 

Elisha's servant was the first to discover the Syrian en- 
campment. He seems to have gone out in the early morn- 
ing, perhaps for water, which in Palestine is usually drawn 
from wells without the city walls. He hurried back to 
his master in great consternation. " Alas ! my master," he 
cried, " how shall we do V 

Elisha, however, manifested no discomposure. He re- 
plied in language which the Christian world has since 
adopted as its own : " Fear not ; for they that be with us 
are more than they that be with them." The young man 
could not understand this language. He could see the 
chariots, and horses, and tents of Syria. He could see noth- 
ing able to withstand them. He had no conception of the 
declaration of David, " The angel of the Lord encampeth 
around about them that fear him, and delivereth them." 

Elisha had compassion on his servant. Unable to in- 
spire him with faith in an unseen God, the prophet be- 



Ig2 ^^^ TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

sought the Lord to vouclisafe to this terrified rationalist 
a glimpse of the invisible guardians whose presence he 
seemed otherwise unable to comprehend. The request was 
granted. " And the Lord opened the eyes of the young 
man, and he saw ; and behold, the mountain was full of 
horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." 

This sight seems to have been afforded solely to reassure 
the trembling heart of the servant. No use was made of 
the horses and chariots. The Syrians were smitten with a 
mental blindness, which made them fall easily into the 
snare which Elisha prepared for them. He went boldly 
out of the city to the Syrian camp. He made as if he 
would open negotiations with them. They told him they 
were not after prey, but after Elisha the prophet. " Fol- 
low me," said he, " and I will bring you to the man whom 
ye seek." He fulfilled his promise. But he did not dis- 
close himself till he had brought them into the very heart 
of Samaria, where, surrounded by the armies of Israel, they 
were entirely at the mercy of Jehoram. The King of Is- 
rael was anxious to fall upon them and punish their te- 
merity with the sword. But Elisha forbade, with some in- 
dignation: "Wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast 
taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow V said he. 
Instead, he ordered a feast to be prepared for them. After 
they had partaken of it they were dismissed. Doubtless 
the King of Syria was equally surprised at the issue of his 
campaign, and at the unheard-of treatment which the cap- 
tive army received. He seems to have been shamed for 
the time into peace ; for the sacred historian closes his 



ELISHA'S VISION. 183 

narration by telling ns that " the bands of Syria came no 
more into the land of Israel." 



In a religious point of view, the history of the world 
prior to the appearance of Christ may be briefly described 
as a struggle between the sensuous and the super-sensuous. 
That struggle was not confined to the Jewish people, nor 
were the educative influences, which gradually prepared 
the way for the life of faith on the earth, limited to Pales- 
tine. In India, Buddha protested, though in vain, against 
the gross idolatries of Brahminism. In China, Confucius 
made a similar, though no more successful attempt to sup- 
plant, with a cold but pure morality, the same imaginative 
but degrading worship. In Greece and Rome there were 
not a few pure spirits who dimly discerned and mystically 
interpreted the life of God in the soul. Yet, while the 
world has never been without some such witnesses, even 
in its darkest hours, on the whole the strong tendency of 
the human race has been to ignore the unseen world alto- 
gether. Probably to the vast majority of Christendom, 
and even to many Christians, Paul's expression, " We look 
not at the things which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen," is a mystical expression, which they attrib- 
ute to a poetical frame of mind, and interpret accordingly. 

It is in an especial degree the tendency of the present 
age to deal only with tangible truths. Eeason is the high- 
priest of the Nineteenth Century^ It knows only the phe- 
nomena which the senses report to it. Its philosophy 
scouts the aphorism of Pascal, " The heart has reasons of 



184 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

its own that the reason knows not of." It tries every 
teaching by scientific tests; weighs moral truths in the 
apothecary's scales; sends divine and unseen realities to 
the chemists to be analyzed and tested. 

But there is, nevertheless, an invisible world, which they 
only see whose eyes the Lord has opened. Science tells 
us a great deal; but there is a sphere which it is abso- 
lutely incompetent to enter; about which, question it as 
you may, it is absolutely dumb. It can analyze the flower, 
and tell you all its parts, and describe its wonderful mech- 
anisms and their yet more wonderful operations; but it 
has neither the eye to discern nor the heart to feel the 
subtle influence of its divine beauty. It dissects with its 
keen scalpel the human frame, and tells you the nature 
and function of every part — what the heart supplies, what 
the nerves do, how the muscles act. But there is no anat- 
omy possible of the soul ; no microscope discloses the na- 
ture and the office of reason, imagination, love. The inner 
life hides itself from the baffled scientist. It needs the 
prophetic eye to discern the true man within. There are 
truths which can not be deduced ; which are not wrought 
out with much thought and from much observation ; which 
are incapable of logical demonstration. They are to be 
known, to be instantly apprehended by the soul upon the 
mere presentation of them. The musician can not prove 
that the harmonies of Mendelssohn or Beethoven are grand 
to one whose soul is not thrilled by them. The practical 
mill-man, who saw in Niagara nothing but a great water- 
power, was simply incapable of appreciating that " grand- 



ELI8HA'8 VISION. 185 

eur of the Creator's power" whicli led Audubon to bow 
before it trembling in silent adoration. Love can not be 
proved to a mother. The babe on her breast is the only 
demonstration. Disbelief in love is the evidence of an in- 
durated heart. The man who misanthropically scouts at 
affection, only witnesses, by his skepticism, his own moral 
degradation. 

It is of this unseen world the Bible treats. Iri the Old 
Testament times God revealed it to the race, still in child- 
hood, by disclosures to the senses. Under the New Testa- 
ment dispensation God reveals it to the race, advanced to- 
ward manhood, by developing within the soul a power of 
spiritual discernment. Rationalism expects us to prove 
all that we believe. There are beliefs that are far above 
all proof. Of them we can only say, " We speak that we 
do know, and testify that we have seen." Theology does 
not — at least it never ought to — rest on argument, but on 
experience. We believe not what is proved to us, but 
what we have felt in our own souls. Of such truths we 
say what Sam Johnson said of Free-will, " We know it, 
and that's the end on't." 

Herbert Spencer has labored to demonstrate that it is 
impossible for the human soul to form any conception of 
God. Job's friend proved the same truism centuries be- 
fore. Neither can the babe form any conception of its 
mother. It 'knows its mother nevertheless, cries when 
away from her, sleeps contented in her arms. Carlyle has 
said many foolish things and some wise ones, but none, I 
think, truer than this : " Of final causes, man, by the na- 



X85 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

ture of the case, can prove notliing ; knows them (if he 
know any thing of them), not by the glimmering flint- 
sparks of logic, but by an infinitely higher light of intui- 
tion." Atheism, by whatever alias it conceals itself, is sim- 
ply blindness. Our faith in God rests not on arguments 
which prove his existence, but on the fact that we have 
felt his arms encircle us. 

Doubtless Moses believed in God while he still remained 
in Egypt. He was familiar with those arguments by 
which the wise men, even of that polytheistic land, proved 
the existence of a Great First Cause. He had learned, 
through his mother's sacred instructions, of the God of his 
fathers. But after he had stood by the burning bush — aft- 
er, in the solemn mountain-top, he had talked with Jeho- 
vah, did he need any longer to sustain his faith by these 
poor considerations ? He who, on the more sacred Mount 
of Calvary, has seen his Savior through the gathering 
gloom, and talked there with his God as friend talketh 
with friend, needs no argument to prove to him that God 
is. Nor can all the cold logic of a Herbert Spencer coun- 
tervail the witness of this experience. No man can by 
searching find out God. Science can never disclose him. 
Nevertheless, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." Science is supreme in her own dominion, but 
the unseen world is not within it. 

All the arguments which philosophical theology brings 
to witness to the divinity and the atoning sacrifice of 
Christ, however useful as buttresses, are but poor founda- 
tion-stones for Christian faith in him. The four Gospels 



ELISHA'S VISION. I37 

are the best Evidences of Christianity. Christ is his own 
highest witness. We accept him, not for his credentials, 
but for himself ; not because he is proved to us to be the 
Son of God, but upon the mere sight of him. Worship is 
refused him only by those to whom he is not really known. 
Their eyes are holden that they can not see. I am sure 
that if any man saw the Jesus that I see, he would fall 
down before him crying " My Lord and my God." There 
are many who, like the young man, look up and see only 
clouds in the horizon. By-and-by the hand of Christ touch- 
es their eyes ; the prayer of Christ intercedes for them, and 
with open eyes they behold, in what was before only the 
Son of the carpenter, the very Son of God. Not all the 
apostles could by their arguments have convinced the iron- 
hearted centurion. But when he saw that Jesus so cried 
out and gave up the ghost, he said, " Truly this man was 
the Son of God." 

In short, there is a spiritual sense which directly and im- 
mediately perceives the world of invisible truth. In this 
domain it rules supreme. It has no rival, no peer. It alone 
is competent to investigate spiritual truth. The time will 
come when education will systematically develop this fac- 
ulty, which it now systematically neglects ; for at present 
it is unrecognized. Science has not heard of it. It finds 
no place in the customary classification of the faculties. 
Neither Hamilton, nor Spurzheim, nor Bain, nor Spencer 
recognize it. But the Bible is full of it. Life, in which 
are many things undreamed of in our yet partial philoso- 
phy, abounds in the manifestations of it. Moses witnesses 



183 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

to it. David sings of it. IsaiaL, witli more than mortal 
eloquence, portrays the immortal truths which it has re- 
vealed to him. Paul is endowed with preternatural pow- 
er, because it discloses to him the sublime mysteries of the 
wisdom of God, which none of the princes of this world 
knew. And an innumerable host of Christians, strength- 
ened, sustained, comforted by its hidden life, bear witness 
by their lives to its reality and its efficacy. 

If, then, fellow-Christian, you are sometimes perplexed 
by arguments which you can not answer, recur to this hid- 
den witness on whose testimony your faith is really found- 
ed. If the Bible is really the bread of life to your soul, if 
it gives comfort to you in affliction, peace in storm, victory 
in sore battle, you need no other evidence that it is the 
Word of God. If Christ is to you a present help, if you 
hear his voice counseling you, and see his luminous form 
guiding you, and hear in your own soul his message to 
your troubled conscience, " Peace, be still," you need no oth- 
er argument, as you can have no higher one, that he is Sa- 
vior and God to you. This sight of the soul is above all 
reason. Mary, hearing the message of the disciples that 
Christ was arisen, believed it not. Coming to the sepul- 
chre, and finding it empty, even the declaration of the an- 
gel was insufficient to assure her. But the voice of her 
Lord, though he but uttered in well-known accents her 
name, " Mary," was enough. She doubted, could doubt 
no more. It is not on the witness of men, nor even on 
that of angels, our faith in a crucified and a risen Savior 
rests; but on this, that he has spoken our name, and 



ELISHA'8 VISION. 189 

turned, by the very sweetness of his voice, our night of 
weeping into a day of unutterable joy. "Now we be- 
lieve, not because of thy saying ; for we have heard him 
ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Sav- 
ior of the world." 

If, on the other hand, reader, your soul is haunted by 
many doubts which the incantations of philosophy can not 
lay; if the cold creed of a Church stands between you and 
Christ ; if love is waiting on knowledge, and you are de- 
laying to follow Jesus until, by the slow processes of a 
blind and stumbling logic, you can analyze the scientific 
deductions of human theology, poor at its best estate, con- 
sider whether the story of Elisha and his servant has not 
some significance for you. It is not by demonstration that 
what seems now only clouds will be disclosed to you horses 
and chariots of fire. For you theology is a snare, and phi- 
losophy a delusion. Do you doubt whether the Bible is 
the inspired Word of God ? Do not stop to ascertain. Use 
it for what it is worth, and in using learn what that worth 
is. Do you doubt whether Jesus is the Son of Grod ? Do 
not stop to examine his credentials. Philosophy has no 
higher argument to offer than that which Philip offered to 
Nathaniel, " Come and see." Your theology must be the 
outgrowth of your own experience, .not the cast-off clothing 
of another. Science never solves skepticism. " Oh, taste 
and see that the Lord is good." 




MORDECAIS TRIUMPH. 



THE qUEEJS'S GROWN. 193 



XIY. 

THE QUEEJST'S CKOWN. 

TT is a somewhat singular fact, the explanation of which 
may be left to those who endeavor to ^x certain arbi- 
trary bounds beyond which woman can not pass, that the 
heroines of Hebrew history are represented as having, al- 
most audaciously, broten over the restraints which the 
conventionalism of their own age prescribed, in order to 
fulfill duties to which they were called either by their 
own extraordinary endowments, or by the peculiar circum- 
stances in which they were placed. Whatever may be 
thought of " woman's sphere," it is certain that its bound- 
aries have been steadily enlarged ; that an increased liber- 
ty, not only of secular employments and civil rights, but 
also of social intercourse, has been accorded to her with in- 
creasing civilization ; and that, so far from losing, either in 
the delicacy and refinement of her own character, or in the 
chivalric homage paid to her by man, she has gained in 
both respects in the same ratio in which she has been freed 
from the trammels of an unnatural conventionalism, and 
elevated to a position of real equality with the dominant 
sex. Nowhere is she so carefully guarded as in the Orient. 
Nowhere is she kept in so degrading, so intolerable a bond- 
age. Nowhere is she so free as in America. Nowhere is 

N 



]^94 ^LD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

she held in higher honor ; nowhere has she attained a char- 
acter more worthy the homage paid to her. 

The charm of the story of Esther lies in the fact that it 
portrays the heroism of a woman who thus broke over the 
rules which society prescribed in order that she might save 
her nation from destruction, performing with true wom- 
anly courage an act which, doubtless, the conventionalism 
of her age pronounced most unwomanly. 

Hadassah, better known by her Persian name of Esther, 
was born of Jewish parents, but in the land of Persia, at a 
time of Judah's greatest declension and suffering, and of 
Persia's greatest power and glory. Her parents died in 
her infancy. She was adopted by her cousin Mordecai, 
and brought up by him. Of her early history we know 
nothing more than this ; and of her personal appearance 
only that she was remarkable, even in that land of beauti- 
ful women, for her marvelous beauty. 

The Persian throne was occupied by Xerxes, surnamed 
the Great rather from the grandeur of his domain than 
from any greatness of character. He was, in fact, an un- 
reasonable, self willed, capricious, passionate, voluptuous, 
sensual despot. At the commencement of his reign he dis- 
played, indeed, considerable military ambition. He deter- 
mined to subjugate Grreece. He organized for this purpose 
an immense army, and marched it across the Hellespont. 
He anticipated an easy victory; he experienced a humili- 
ating defeat. The winds and waves destroyed his bridge 
of boats. A storm shattered his fleet. A mere handful 
of Grecian warriors held his whole army at bay at the Pass 



THE qUEEIPS GBOWK 195 

of Thermopylae until treachery gave him the victory which 
the valor of his troops had been unable to obtain. His 
whole campaign was marked by deeds of commingled folly, 
cruelty, and impiety. It was not redeemed by a single 
generous sentiment or valorous action. He beheaded the 
engineers who built his bridge across the Hellespont be- 
cause a storm destroyed it. He punished the presumptu- 
ous sea by ordering it to be scourged. His friend Pythias 
put at the king's disposal his entire fortune. His fiNQ sons 
were in the despot's army. The father requested that the 
eldest might be suffered to remain at home. The angry 
monarch responded to the request by slaying the son, and 
cutting the dead body in two, that the army might march 
between the dissevered portions. The bravery of Leonidas 
has rendered his name immortal among all civilized na- 
tions and to all time. Xerxes indicated his appreciation 
of the bravery of his chivalric foe by cutting the head from 
the dead body and crucifying the headless trunk. At the 
first serious disaster, like a coward as he was, he fled back 
to Persia, taking an ample body-guard for his own protec- 
tion, and leaving Mardonius to extricate the remainder of 
his army from the toils into which his own folly had led 
it. Disgraced, but not humbled, he returned to his palace 
to forget the shame of his inglorious campaign in a more 
shameful life of self-indulgence. He abandoned the ad- 
ministration of his government to his ministers. He gave 
himself up to a life of debauchery and vice. By a public 
edict he offered a prize to the discovery of any new form 
of pleasure. His drunken orgies lasted continuously for 



l^Q OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

days and even weeks. Least of generals, lie became great- 
est of debauchees. His brother's wife and his son's wife 
were successively the victims of his amours. His brother 
and his nephews were successively the victims of his hate. 
And, finally, he, who had employed mercilessly the assas- 
sin's knife, perished himself by the hand of an assassin, aft- 
er twenty years of a shameful reign. 

Such was the king who occupied the throne of Persia at 
the time our story opens. In secular history he is known 
as Xerxes. In Scripture he is designated by the Hebrew 
form of the same word — Ahasuerus. 

In the harem of this lecherous tyrant was a woman by 
the name of Vashti. She had the misfortune to be exceed- 
ingly beautiful, and so to be, for the time, a favorite with 
the king. The love of such a monarch is as dangerous as 
his hate. Vashti found it so. In one of those drunken 
carousals which, under the reign of Xerxes, nightly dis- 
graced the palace at Shushan, he ordered Vashti to be 
brought into the drinking-hall. He was proud of his fa- 
vorite's beauty, and desired to show his boon ^companions 
that his boasting was not idle. We need not give cre- 
dence to the horrible tradition that he demanded to ex- 
hibit her nude form to his drunken court. To ask her to 
come unveiled, that she might make exhibition of her face 
in such a scene and to such a crowd, were insult shameful 
enough to any woman at any time. It was an insult im- 
measurable in Persia, where the virtuous wife rarely, if 
ever, unveiled her face in the presence of any but her hus- 
band's most intimate and confidential friends. Vashti in- 



THE QUEEN'S GBOWK 197 

dignantly refused to submit to tMs shameful exhibition. 
The king, inflamed with wine, took counsel of his boon 
companions, pronounced upon the spot sentence of divorce, 
and issued a decree making public Vashti's deposition — 
her apparent humiliation ; her real glory. 

When the night's orgies were passed, and the king came 
to himself, he revolted at his own act. It was not the in- 
justice done to a true woman ; it was the loss suffered by 
himself in that his favorite wife was gone. He had not 
self-respect enough to retract a shameful decree, only just 
enough to keep him from such honorable inconsistency. 
His friends, so Josephus tells us, cast about how they might 
erase the image of Vashti from the monarch's mind. Their 
method curiously illustrates the temper both of the man 
and of the times. The officers of his kingdom were direct- 
ed to collect the fairest maidens of their respective prov- 
inces. From them the king was to select a successor to 
Vashti. 

That Mordecai should have sent his niece to compete for 
the doubtful honors of such a post does not consort with 
our conceptions of a guardian's duty. A modern Esther 
would certainly have revolted against a candidateship so 
degrading. But allowance must be made for the fact that 
times have changed, and humanity has made progress since. 
Doubtless the uncle thought it would be an excellent thing 
for Esther if she could become the favorite of a monarch 
so august as Xerxes. Perhaps she shared the opinion with 
him. In the sixteenth century after Christ, Henry the 
Eighth experienced no difficulty in finding women quite 



X 9 8 ^^^ TESTAMENT SHAD WS. 

ready to accept the doubtful and dangerous honor of Lis 
royal hand. Esther seems to have interposed no objec- 
tion. Her beauty was quite sufficient to supplant in the 
royal memory that of Vashti, and she became the favorite 
of his harem in her predecessor's place. That she was a 
Jewess no one suspected. Mordecai had shrewdly bid her 
keep her birth a secret. He accompanied his niece to 
court; obtained, it would seem, some petty office there, 
though this is not very clear ; sat continually at the outer 
gate of the king's palace ; and continued to maintain much 
of his old relation of authority over Esther, despite her 
change of station. 

The later years of Xerxes's reign were rife with plots for 
his assassination. Such a plot, occurring at this time, came 
to the knowledge of Mordecai. He disclosed it to the 
young wife, and she, in her turn, to her husband. The 
would-be assassins were put to death. A record of the 
whole transaction, with the name of the informer, was pre- 
served in the court archives. But the careless king in- 
quired not narrowly into it. He attributed his escape to 
Esther. Mordecai was forgotten, and gained nothing by 
his discovery of the plot. 

While these events were occurring, a skillful but un- 
scrupulous courtier was steadily climbing to the first place 
in the kingdom. This was Haman, an Amalekite by de- 
scent, who shared with his nation its long-nurtured hate of 
the Israelitish people. Cunning, vain, cowardly, and venge- 
ful, he possessed that peculiar power which self control 
gives to wickedness as well as to virtue. Passionately fond 



THE QUEEN'S GROWN. 199 

of display, he yet contrived to gratify his vanity without 
avowing it. Participating, without a scruple, in the shame- 
ful orgies of the king, he yet preserved his own sobriety, 
and never lost sight of his own ulterior purposes. Hating 
whomsoever crossed his path with a persistence which the 
brutally passionate king could never comprehend, he could 
yet hide his hate till his measures for a more than fiendish 
revenge were fully consummated. Crafty in purpose, and 
sinuous in action, he was an insincere friend, and an invet- 
erate, though a secret and complaisant foe. Such a man 
readily acquires control of one whose wickedness is that 
of unregulated impulses rather than of deliberate design. 
Haman's influence over Xerxes was unbounded. Foreigner 
though he was, he supplanted all the native princes, and 
obtained the very highest rank in the kingdom. The Per- 
sians are a sycophantic race. To this rising star all the 
satellites of an obsequious court rendered their homage. 

In this universal adulation paid to Haman, Mordecai 
alone remained decorously, but scornfully erect and haugh- 
ty. A Pharisee, in an age when Phariseeism had not yet 
degenerated from a sturdy principle to a stereotyped form, 
he possessed that defiant self respect, and that robust, though 
somewhat narrow conscience which rendered the Puritan, 
two thousand years later, so rigidly virtuous. Between 
two such characters there always arises a bitter hatred — a 
principle in the one, a passion in the other. The Jew de- 
spised the cunning but treacherous complaisance of the 
Amalekite. The Amalekite hated the rigorous virtue and 
inflexible pride of the Jew. It was the Cavalier against 



200 ^LD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

the Puritan, tlie Jesuit against the Huguenot. Haman 
waited his time, and nursed his wrath, which grew with 
the nursing to hideous proportions. Patience in passion is 
the very climax of wickedness. He determined to avenge 
the insults he had received by obliterating with one cruel 
stroke the entire Jewish population of the empire. 

The Jews were then, as now, a thrifty people. Haman 
calculated that the extermination of this captive race, and 
the confiscation of their estates, would put into the royal 
treasury over ten millions of dollars. He seized a favor- 
able opportunity for proposing this scheme to Xerxes. He 
was so confident of the result that he proposed to pay the 
sum out of his own coffers. The king's funds were ex- 
hausted by excessive and increasing luxury and dissipa- 
tion. He cared little about the lives of a few thousand of 
his subjects. If his conscience considered the matter at 
all, it was satisfied by the fact that this foreign people wor- 
shiped their own God, maintained their own religious rites, 
and preserved, even in their captivity, their own peculiar 
code of laws. With the capriciousness of a despot who 
does not care to trouble himself about affairs of state, he 
took off his royal ring, and gave it to Haman : " Do with 
them," said he, " as it seemeth good unto thee." The de- 
cree was issued accordingly. It provided for the absolute 
extermination of all the Jews within Xerxes's domain. It 
was posted in the palace. It was sent out by couriers to 
every province. Then Haman and the king sat down to 
ratify it in a drinking bout. 

To remonstrate was idle. Pythias had proved that. The 



THE QUEEN'S CROWN. QQl 

Jews gave themselves up to irremediable grief. Mordecai 
w^ore sackcloth even at the king's gate. The careless des- 
pot never noticed his servant's strange attire ; never, at 
least, asked its meaning. The Persian court, guarding its 
pleasures against every intrusion, forbade the entrance 
within the palace of all such symbols of sorrow. Mean- 
while Esther, in her seclusion, was quite ignorant of the 
decree. She first learned its terms from Mordecai. He 
sent her a copy of the edict. At the same time, he called 
upon her to intercede with her husband for her people. 
Of course he had no admission to the harem, she no exit 
from it. A faithful servant carried their messages to and 
fro. 

Esther hesitated. To enter uninvited the royal presence 
was to break over all the rules of court etiquette, disregard 
all the proprieties of Persian life, overstep the very bounds 
of womanly reserve. Nor was it safe to venture much on 
the favor of this capricious king. A single crossing of his 
will drove Vashti from her throne. And yet the judg- 
ment of the monarch, when sober, must have condemned 
the decree issued by the monarch when drunk. Already 
Esther's power seemed to be weakened. It was thirty 
days since she had seen the king. Persian law hedged 
royalty about with peculiar dignity. To enter its presence 
unbidden was a capital offense. To Esther it seemed an 
act audacious — like entering the very court of death itself 

To her remonstrances Mordecai returned a simple but 
significant reply. It curiously interprets the character of 
the man. It is such an answer as a Cromwell might have 



202 ^^^ TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

given to his daughter. " Think not with thyself that thou 
shalt escape in the king's house more than all the Jews. 
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then 
shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews 
from another place ; but thou and thy father s house shall 
be destroyed ; and who knoweth whether thou art come to 
the kingdom for such a time as this?" 

He had read his adopted daughter's character correctly. 
She prepared to fulfill the service required of her. She 
bade Mordecai gather the Jews of Shushan together, and 
observe three days of prayer and fasting. She, with her 
Jewish maidens, observed them also within the palace 
walls. Then she laid aside all emblems of her grief. She 
schooled herself utterly to conceal its every indication. She 
understood the king's weaknesses. She prepared a ban- 
quet of wine for him. She attired herself with unusual 
care in her royal apparel, making the most of her extraor- 
dinary beauty. Then she crossed the threshold of the 
harem, traversed the court that separated it from the main 
hall of the palace, pushed her way through the throng of 
surprised courtiers and attendants, and stood in the door- 
way of the throne-room, waiting with beating heart the 
signal that should give hope of life to her nation, or should 
decree death to both it and her. 

The moment is auspicious, the king in gracious mood. 
He holds out his sceptre, signal of favor. She draws near 
to touch it, then prefers her request. It is simply that 
the king will honor with his presence her banquet of wine. 
Will he also be pleased to bring his favorite minister, 



THE QUEEN'S CROWN. 203 

Haman, with him. The king will be pleased to do so. 
He descends from his throne. The minister and his mas- 
ter sit together at the table Esther has prepared for them. 
But she is still reticent. Pressed by the king to declare 
her request, she simply repeats her invitation. Will the 
king and Haman do her the honor to partake upon the 
morrow of another banquet ? She will then make known 
her petition. The king promises. The banquet draws to 
its close. The monarch and his minister depart. The first 
and hardest step is taken. 

Haman is completely duped. He goes home elated. He 
has enjoyed the highest honor w^hich the king can bestow 
upon him. He has sat at the same table with his favorite 
wife. Whether he has really secured the favor of that 
wife, or whether she is seeking to secure his, he cares not. 
In either case his power is equally assured. The dream 
of his ambition is already realized. The very envy of his 
fellows enhances the subtle exhilaration of his dainty vani- 
ty. One thing alone detracts from it. Mordecai still 
stands at the king's gate. His people are condemned to 
die. He will die with them. The signs of sorrow are 
written in his face. The uncomely sackcloth constitutes 
his dress. But he is as erect as ever, and repays the fiery 
glance of hate that leaps from Haman's eyes with scorn in- 
vincible. Haman's revenge loses its patience. He can no 
longer wait till the appointed day of death shall come. 
Mordecai shall die upon the morrow. That very night 
the gallows for his execution are erected. 

That very night the king, strangely sleepless, bids the 



204 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

chamberlains read for his entertainment from the records 
of the court. They hap to read the story of his preserva- 
tion by Mordecai from the assassin's knife. What has 
been done to Mordecai ? Nothing. What shall be done ? 
Xerxes is still pondering this question when Haman en- 
ters, in the morning, to ask for Mordecai's execution. The 
king is first to speak. " What shall be done," he says, " to 
the man whom the king delighteth to honor?" Revenge 
is sweet, but the intoxication of a gratified vanity is sweet- 
er to this Amalekite. Besides, the gallows can wait. And 
that he is the one whom the king delighteth to honor the 
curiously self conceited soul of Haman never doubts. So 
he sketches for the king the display he covets. 

"For the man whom the king delighteth to honor," he 
replies, " let the royal apparel be brought which the king 
useth to wear, and the horse tkat the king rideth upon, 
and the crown royal which is set upon his head ; and let 
this aj)parel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of 
the king's most noble princes, that they may array the man 
withal whom the king delighteth to honor, and bring him 
on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim 
before him, ' Thus shall it be done to the man whom the 
king delighteth to honor.' " 

Well said, wise counselor. Wherefore make haste, and 
take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do 
even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king's 
gate. 

Thunderstruck and speechless, Haman proceeds to exe- 
cute the king's commission. He proclaims, through the 



THE QUBEJSrS CROWN. 205 

streets of the capital, royal honors to the man whose gal- 
lows he had the night before constructed ; then, in a tem- 
pest of humiliated pride, of hot and hardly restrained rage, 
and of shadowy fear, he hurries home. His obsequious 
followers drop away from him. Even his wife taunts him. 
He has no clear conception of the dangers thickening 
around him, no self reliant courage to meet them if he had. 
He is still counseling with his friends when the chamber- 
lains come to hasten him to Esther's banquet. He has not, 
then, lost caste at court. He will yet retrieve himself. 
Encouraging himself with this hope, despite some dark 
forebodings of unknown calamities yet to come, he hastens 
back to the palace. Again the king and his favorite court- 
ier sit down at the table of the beautiful Esther. Again 
the king repeats his question, " What is thy petition. Queen 
Esther ? and it shall be granted thee ; and what is thy re- 
quest ? and it shall be performed to the half of the king- 
dom." 

Then Esther, with the impassioned eloquence of the 
woman, and the courtly bearing of the queen, pleads for 
her life, and the life of her people, and the life of Mordecai, 
the king's deliverer. The careless monarch has already 
forgotten the decree wheedled from him in a drunken orgy. 
His passion is something terrible to witness. " Who is he, 
and where is he," he cries, " that durst presume in his heart 
to do so T All the pent-up scorn of the woman's lacer- 
ated heart bursts forth in her fierce indictment of "the ad- 
versary and enemy, this wicked Haman." The king, too 
angry to speak, rises from the table, and goes out to the 



205 OL^ TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

cool of the garden to collect his thoughts. The craven- 
hearted Haman, groveling in the very abjectness of his 
fear, falls down on Esther's couch, beseeching for his life. 
Such cowardice has no power to awaken compassion. She 
shrinks from the pollution of his touch. The king, return- 
ing, pretends to believe that Haman is threatening her with 
violence before his eyes. " Will he force the queen also 
before me in the house V he cries. This is sentence of con- 
demnation enough. In all the court, obsequious as it has 
been, Haman has not a single true and trusty friend. Ev- 
ery heart exults in his downfall. Eager are the hands that 
bear him away to hang him on the gallows he had pre- 
pared for Mordecai. 

An absurd provision of the Persian constitution prohibit- 
ed the repeal of any decree, however odious. Even Xerxes 
could not retract the edict which Haman had promulgated 
under the royal seal. A second decree was therefore is- 
sued. It authorized the Jews to stand their ground, to de- 
fend themselves against their enemies, and so to preserve 
their lives which had been declared forfeited. A brief but 
sanguinary conflict ensued. The moral influence of the 
court was with the Jews. They were victorious. But it 
was not until over seven ty-five thousand of their enemies 
had been slain. It is a Jewish tradition that the entire 
Amalekitish people perished in this conflict. The deliv- 
erance of the Jews is celebrated in their synagogues to the 
present day by a national feast, and the book of Esther is 
held by them in reverence second only to that which is ac- 
corded to the Pentateuch itself 



THE QUEEIP8 GROWN. 207 

In our reverence for the higher Christian experiences we 
are apt to forget the homelier virtues. In these later days, 
when the qualities of amiableness, and gentleness, and char- 
ity toward all mankind are so exclusively praised, we are 
apt to slight the rarer virtue of true courage, which there 
is little to call forth. The ruggedness of the Puritan is not 
pleasing. We scarcely consider that he whose life is a cam- 
paign must needs wear a coat of mail. Yet nothing is more 
certain than that courage is a Christian virtue, and that, a 
cowardly Christian is an anomaly in theory, however com- 
mon it may seem to be in actual life. Christianity has 
been rightly entitled " a battle, not a dream." There are 
many heroes of the night, who win great victories, perform 
great achievements, but never leave the pillow. It is not 
thus "sleeping the hours away" that we are to gain our 
crown. Without courage to do, to dare, to suffer, there is 
neither victory here nor coronation hereafter. Courage is 
the alchemist who transmutes noble aspirations into a no- 
ble life. It is not enough that we revere Christ. We 
must follow him, if need be, to Gethsemane and to Cal- 
vary ; through the midnight hour of agonizing prayei', the 
shame and spitting of the judgment-hall, the protracted 
anguish of the crucifixion. " Be thou faithful unto death, 
and I will give thee a crown of life." Courage is the 
Christian's coronation. There is no crown without it. 

" Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." 
This is the message which Esther brings us. This is gener- 
ally the last thing we are willing to do. We are quite 
ready to run, with most exemplary patience, every race but 



^08 0^^ TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

our own ; to figlit every battle but the particular one to 
whicli God has called us. It is not only that we di-ead 
the danger, shrink from the rugged path ; but we mark 
our deficiencies, account ourselves ill adapted to the work, 
answer to the call of God as Moses did, entreat him to find 
another candidate for work which we consider too difficult 
for our capacities. 

Esther, timid, tender, retiring, dependent on her cousin 
even after she became a queen, was not the woman you 
would have chosen to be the deliverer of her people. But 
God adapts his instruments to their work. He is with 
Moses's mouth, and teaches him what he shall say. He 
gives Esther the courage and the rare self control when the 
critical and trying hour comes. It is always safe to run 
the race which God sets before us. We need not trouble 
ourselves overmuch about our capacities. His promise is, 
"As thy days, so shall thy strength be." "Whatever duty, 
then, God lays upon you, do it bravely, manfully, unhesi- 
tatingly. The issue is in his hands. The responsibility is 
his. If you can look back upon exigencies in life when, 
for Christ's sake, you have taken up a difficult duty, faced 
a real danger, you can bear witness that the lions are al- 
ways chained. If you have had no such experience, it is 
time you had it. God often gives us tasks we think too 
great for us, as a teacher gives his pupil a problem that 
tries his powers to the uttermost, just that he may prove 
us, and see what is our mettle. If a duty too arduous, if a 
path too dangerous lie before you, ask yourself this ques- 



THE QUEEN'S CROWN. 209 

tion, "Who knoweth whether thou art come to the king- 
dom for such a time as this V 

Esther's history has its prophetic meaning too. Turn 
your eyes for one moment from this national deliverance 
to the grander one it typifies. See a race in bondage ; for- 
eigners in a strange land, lying under sentence of death — 
but sentence justly deserved. See a great Deliverer not 
only hazarding, but freely giving his life a ransom for 
many. Hear, in Esther's prayer, the faint echo of his who 
ever liveth and maketh intercession for us. Well might 
the Jewish nation hold in immortal honor this Esther, 
whose more than queenly courage saved their race from 
destruction. Well may we hold thee, O Christ, in immor- 
tal honor, whose plea has annulled the inexorable edict, 
and given us deliverance. 

' ' Interceding 
With these bleeding 
Wounds upon thy hands and feet, 
For all who have lived and erred 
Thou hast suffered, thou hast died. 
Scourged, and mocked, and crucified, 
And in the grave hast thou been buried. " 



A golden thread, woven into the Old Testament history, 
renders the various lives whose stories it recounts only dif 
ferent phases of the same experience. That golden thread 
is faith. Not faith in the atoning blood of a Savior ; the 
patriarchs knew nothing — certainly nothing clear or defi- 
nite — of a Savior. Not faith in the dogmas of the Church ; 
the creed did not assume its present form until several cen- 

O 



210 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

turies after Christ, some of its tenets not till the Reforma- 
tion. But faith in God ; faith that he is, and is the re- 
warder of them that diligently seek him ; faith, the sub- 
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen ; 
this, the common blood of all the children of Grod, what- 
ever their creed, their Church, their age, or their nation, 
makes of them all one household. 

The shortest, but most significant biography in the Bible 
is the sentence, "Enoch walked with Grod." This sen- 
tence reveals the secret power which made the lives of 
Abraham, of Moses, of David, of the prophets illustrious. 
Mr. Lecky is right in saying, " Among Christians, the ideals 
have commonly been either supernatural beings, or men 
who were in constant connection with supernatural be- 
ings." The very teaching of the Scriptures is this, that ev- 
ery man should live in constant and intimate connexion 
with his heavenly Father; that he is not made to live by 
bread alone, but by every word, or, as the Germans ex- 
press it, by " the all" which proceedeth from the mouth of 
God ; that the Spirit of God acts immediately and directly 
upon the human soul, strengthening its courage, quicken- 
ing its moral sense, enlightening its judgment, inspiring all 
its faculties with peculiar power, and enabling it constant- 
ly to do, to bear, to suffer what elsewise would be far be- 
yond its capacities. They measure the human soul, not by 
its inherent powers, but by its readiness to receive and 
profit by this divine companionship ; not by its native wis- 
dom, courage, or goodness, but by its faith. It is this 
which gives to Hebrew history its peculiar charm, and 



THE QUEEN'S GROWN. 211 

makes it dear to thousands of readers who are ignorant of 
Tacitus, of Herodotus, of Plutarch. The whole Bible cul- 
minates in one word, Immanuel — God with us. The Bible 
heroes are not in other respects grander than some of the 
heroes of heathen antiquity. Their peculiar characteristic 
is their susceptibility to divine influence. Their goodness 
is all the product of godliness. Through weakness they 
are made strong by the indwelling Spirit of God. " There 
is no Marathon, no Regillus, no Tours, no Morgarten. All 
is from above, nothing from themselves." Eliezer is not 
celebrated for his own sagacity. God guides him. Joseph 
does not provide Egypt v^ith plenty by his own forecast- 
ing. The prophecy and the plan are God's. Moses is not 
eloquent. God is with his mouth. Samson is vanquished 
because his strength is godless; is victorious in the hour 
when weakness has driven him to God. Esther was cour- 
ageous because God is invincible. 

Faith has not lost its power. The soul still enjoys this 
privilege of receiving inspiration from above. It is not 
the special prerogative of a few saints. It is the common 
right of all. It is not an occasional, exceptional gift. It is 
constant, continuous, the law of our being. It is not a mir- 
acle, interfering with the operations of the human soul. It 
is the condition of our soul's true life. " In him we live, 
and move, and have our being." God is our native air. 
The godless soul gasps out a feeble life in a vacuum. " I 
will not leave you orphans," saith Christ ; " I will come to 
you." Yet, despite this promise, how many orphaned Chris- 
tians there are. They are not exactly fatherless. They 



212 OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS. 

have a memory of a father in the dim past. They have a 
hope of a Father in the far future. But now they live 
without him. They are like travelers in a long and gloomy 
tunnel. They look back to the days of the patriarchs and 
prophets. There is light there. They look forward to the 
revelations of the future life. There is light there. But 
here and now it is dark. 

Oh, fellow -Christian, there is for us something better 
than this. There is a present, helpful God. To us is re- 
peated the promise he made to Moses, "My presence shall 
go with thee, and I will give thee rest." He is our shield 
and buckler as well as David's. He is now, as then, a 
present help in time of trouble. It is as true as when 
Isaiah wrote, " They that wait upon the Lord shall renew 
their strength." This is the meaning of these various lives, 
this the moral they have for us. The Bible celebrates not 
the strength of a Hercules, the wisdom of a Solon, the valor 
of a Hector, the self-sacrificing patriotism of a Kegulus, the 
matronly virtue of a Cornelia, but that faith in God, the 
common heritage of all his children, which endows Moses 
with wisdom greater than that of the Grecian law-giver, 
Joshua with a valor more inspiring than that of the hero 
of Homer's verses, and which alike irradiates the life of 
Joseph, the peasant king, and Eliezer, the faithful servant ; 
Esther, deliverer of her people, and Ruth, in her humble 
sphere, a faithful friend. These all testify to the power of 
that faith which endures, as seeing him who is invisible. 
In them all the Spirit of God, abiding, points with pro- 
phetic promise to him in whom dwelleth all the fullness 



THE QUEEN' 8 GROWN. 



213 



of tlie Godhead bodily, and wlio is, far above all others, 
our pattern and example, chiefly in this, that he did noth- 
ing of himself, but the Father that dwelleth within him, 
he did the works. 

"Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with 
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run 
with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto 
Jesus, the author and finisher of faith ; who, for the joy 
that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the 
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of 
God." 




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